The Science of Discworld (Science of Discworld #1)

In my quest to read all Discworld narrations by Stephen Briggs, I ended up at The Science of Discworld this time and it was… interesting. The book mixes non-fiction explanations of scientific concepts with very-much-fictional adventures of the wizards in Discworld conducting a roundworld experiment. Yes, I know: it’s ridiculous. How can a round world even exist? 🧙‍♂️🌎🤯

The science explainers in this first book in the Science of Discworld series cover the origin of the universe, evolution, quantum physics, and the role of narrative in human understanding. I found most of them quite readable, but some parts were a bit denser for my taste. One thing I love about the Discworld books is how Pratchett takes real-world concepts and twists them into a mockery: both explaining the concept (in quite some detail at times) and making good fun of it. The fictional parts here were all great, treating the scientific topics with the (lack of) respect and ridicule they deserve in a disc-shaped world driven by narrativium.

It’s far from my favorite Pratchett, but it wasn’t bad either. I’ll probably read some of his other (Discworld and non-Discworld) works now (sadly, most by different narrators), but at some point will likely come back to finish the Science of Discworld series.