To hell … and back? #MarchMagics2025

Detail of Hell from a triptych by Hieronymus Bosch.

Eric by Terry Pratchett.
No 4 in the Rincewind series,
Discworld No 9.
Gollancz, 2023 (1990).

Eric was nearly in tears.
‘But it said her face launched a thousand ships—’
‘That’s what you call metaphor,’ said Rincewind.
‘Lying,’ the sergeant explained, kindly.

There is a literary trend for modern writers to take an old plot – it could be by Homer, Shakespeare, Dickens, Shelley, Austen or whoever, all are grist to the mill – and reprise it in a form attuned to contemporary tastes and expectations. Pratchett of course did this back in 1990 with Eric, his take on Doctor Faustus by Christopher Marlowe, and early editions of his novella made this debt clear with ‘Faust‘ crossed out and replaced by its assigned title.

But – this being Pratchett and his setting being the Discworld – can the reader really expect Eric to be merely a slavish rerun of the motif of selling your soul to the devil in return for three wishes! Perish the thought! Standing in for Mesphistophes and Faust are two of the most unlikely denizens of Discworld and, as is his wont, the author’s substitutes will discover that nothing can be taken for granted.

Also, given Pratchett’s penchant for holding a mirror up to Nature (in this case, the modern world), here we have a broad satire on the growing trend in the 1980s to mould every aspect of daily life to fit – however awkwardly or inappropriately – a soulless business template.