This book reminded me very much of a school play at primary school where the children learn their lines and movements by rote and then stiffly deliver said lines before even more stiffly getting themselves into position for whatever comes next. Tomato in the Mirror: Kin is briefly 'awakened' by the technology of the Disc at the end and we discover that she, and presumably everyone else, are Precursors who deliberately forgot their origins 'because if One cannot forget, how can One learn?' This concept was also used in The Dark Side of the Sun. The history of the protagonists' home-planet "Earth" in Strata unfolded very differently from the readers' Earth: Stealth Pun: Pleading for its freedom, a captive demon offers to bid its fellow-demon, "TRESOLAY", to make her more beautiful. Tress Olay is a common name for hair salons.

Strata is another early foray that Pratchett took in to Science Fiction before he rested himself firmly in to the loving arms of Fantasy. My views on this one are similar to that of his other sci-fi novel, The Dark Side of the Sun in that it isn't necessarily a good novel, let alone a good sci-fi story. Their ship is hit by one of the "planets" wandering on the interior of the sphere, so Kin, Marco, and Silver are forced to abandon ship. They land on the flat planet with the help of their "lift-belt" equipped suits, while their ship crashes. A return from the flat world now seems impossible, but hoping for assistance from the disc's mysterious builders, Kin, Marco, and Silver set off towards a structure they had spotted at the disc's hub. It is the only thing on the flat "Earth" which does not match the geography of the spherical Earth they left. My biggest critical complaint, from the point of view of the internal wranglings of the novel, is that the character of Jago Jalo is simply not used correctly. He comes in as a major character who is the whole reason for the story occurring at all, and is then written out, never to appear again. I was waiting for his denouement at the end and...it didn't happen, though he is briefly mentioned. It's annoying because this makes it obvious that he was just a vehicle to get the characters into place. It's all too contrived. Terry Pratchett would never make that mistake again. That's more like it! Reading Pratchett chronologically, I was disappointed by the first two books. They were funny, but chaotic and disjointed. Strata wraps all the chaos and absurdity into a story which successfully holds it together, and stays strong throughout. I'm glad the local library had Strata, and that I read it. The archeology of a favorite author's writing can be interesting, especially if youValhalla rather than North America — the Vikings discovered the continent and colonized it, thinking it was heaven, unlike on our Earth where they abandoned it after a only a few tentative settlements. Fantastic Racism: Being a thousand years old, Jago Jalo is racist against non-humans. He's quite annoyed that Marco was listed as a human (due to Kung religious belief) when he hired him without meeting him first, and holds him at gunpoint while referring to him as "it", as well as using an obscure archaic slur that only Silver (a historian) recognises. Since only the Eastern hemisphere of Earth is represented, the continent of America is completely missing, so Kin, Marco, and Silver rescue a party of Vikings in the process of searching for Vinland, when their ship is about to sail over the edge of the world.

I love Pratchett's Disc World books. They are like literary potato chips to me, I can't read just one. I reread them when life is being particularly difficult and I need a safe and enjoyable place to park my brain. One of Pratchett’s illustrations in the original edition of The Carpet People. Photograph: Terry Pratchett

This novel contains examples of the following tropes:

Although it takes place in a different fictional universe and is more science fiction than fantasy, it could be said to be a kind of precursor to the Discworld novels, as it also features a flat Earth similar to the Discworld. It has been called a "preconsideration" of Discworld, though the plot and characters are modelled on (or parodies of) the novel Ringworld by Larry Niven. [1] Plot summary [ edit ] Mega-Corp: The Company. It builds planets. It also holds a monopoly on life-extending treatments and pays its employees in Days of added lifespan. The entire economy of human space more or less runs on the Day standard. Kin Arad is a high-ranking official of the Company. After twenty-one decades of living, and with the help of memory surgery, she is at the top of her profession. Discovering two of her employees have placed a fossilized plesiosaur in the wrong stratum, not to mention the fact it is holding a placard which reads "End Nuclear Testing Now", doesn't dismay the woman who built a mountain range in the shape of her initials during her own high-spirited youth. Covers tend to depict Kin as Caucasian. It's noted in the text that she can change her skin colour (including to colours outside the normal human range) but when they're exploring the Disc and get captured by the locals, Silver suggests that she should pose as an Ethiopian princess, implying that she's got dark skin at that point. The book implies that the reason for the historical discrepancies is that the readers' "Earth" is actually the replacement world created by Kin Arad for the inhabitants of the malfunctioning disc "Earth", to which the protagonists of the book travel early in the story. While the history and features of the flat "Earth" in Strata clearly is not the one we are familiar with, the history of the flat Earth is consistent with our own, up to the point where the expedition arrives.