Book:The Last Continent

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The Last Continent

Cover	[[Image:\|thumb\|center\|200px\|{{{1}}}]]
Published	May 1998
Publisher	Doubleday
ISBN	0552146145
Pages	416
Series	Rincewind Series
Main characters	Rincewind, Mrs. Whitlow
Annotations	Annotations for The Last Continent
Notes
All data relates to the UK hardback edition.

[edit] Blurb

This is the Discworld's last continent, a completely separate creation.

It's hot. It's dry... very dry. There was this thing once called The Wet, which no one now believes in. Practically everything that's not poisonous is venomous. But it's the best bloody place in the world, all right?

And it'll die in a few days. Except...

Who is this hero striding across the red desert? Champion sheep shearer, horse rider, road warrior, beer drinker, bush ranger and someone who'll even eat a Meat Pie Floater when he's sober? A man in a hat, whose Luggage follows him on little legs, who's about to change history by preventing a swagman stealing a jumbuck by a billabong?

Yes... all this place has between itself and wind-blown doom is Rincewind, the inept wizard who can't even spell wizard. He's the only hero left.

Still... no worries, eh?

[edit] Characters

[edit] Main characters

Rincewind
Mustrum Ridcully
The Librarian
The Senior Wrangler
The Dean
The Bursar
The Chair of Indefinite Studies
The Lecturer in Recent Runes
Ponder Stibbons
Mrs. Whitlow
Creator of XXXX
God of Evolution
Trickster, also known as Scrappy and Snowy

[edit] Minor characters

Strewth, a miner whose name is the Australian expression for "God's truth"
Hex
Death
Mad, a dwarf
Crocodile Crocodile, a barman aka Dongo
The Luggage
Petunia the Desert Princess, transvestite group, consisting of:
- Letitia
- Darleen, who sings Prancing Queen, a parody of ABBA's Dancing Queen
- Neilette, an actual woman
- Noelene, Neilette's brother, who dropped out after trying to surf in a ball gown
Bill Rincewind, Archchancellor of Bugarup University
B. Smoth, Dean of Bugarup University

[edit] Cameos and People Mentioned

McAbre, the head bledlow
Doughnut Jimmy (mentioned)
Swallett, wizard who led expedition to find Lost Reading Room
Professor of Recondite Architecture and Origami Map Folding
Egregious Professor of Cruel and Unusual Geography (mentioned), a title later held by Rincewind
Wally Sluwer, a wizard who gave lectures post-mortem (no one noticed)
Lecturer in Creative Uncertainty, the Discworld equivalent of quantum mechanics
Sir Roderick Purdeigh, explorer who searched for XXXX and claimed it didn't exist (but also once got lost in his own bedroom...)
Death of Rats
Albert
Bewdley, former Archchancellor with a magic hole in his boots
Medley, a medical kleptomaniac (mentioned)
Hoki, god (mentioned)
Creator of the Disc (mentioned)
Ossory (mentioned in an expression)
Hollowlog Joe, drinker in bar
Queen Zazumba of Sumtri (mentioned)
Daggy, sheep shearer
Remorse, a man who owns a fast colt and purchases Snowy
Clancy, a stock man who works for Remorse and helps invent XXXX-ian slang
Tinhead Ned (mentioned), famous escape artist, parodying Ned Kelly
Fair Go Dibbler
Duncan, friend of Fair Go's, who explains "Duncan's me mate", from the Slim Dusty song Duncan
Greg and Vince, troll-like gaolers
Larrikin Larry, criminal whose head flew off like a cork when he was hanged
"Dicky" Bird (mentioned), wizard particularly sensitive to high magical fields
Dibblers around the Disc (mentioned; most of these do not appear in any other book)
- Cut-Me-Own-Throat Dibbler (several books)
- Disembowel-Meself-Honourably Dibhala (from Interesting Times)
- Al-Jiblah
- May-I-Never-Achieve-Enlightenment Dhiblang
- Dib Diblossonson
- May-I-Be-Kicked-In-My-Own-Ice-Hole Dibooki
- Swallow-Me-Own-Blowdart Dlang-Dlang
Ly Tin Wheedle (mentioned)
Charley, a cook depressed at the concept of naming a dessert after famed opera singer Dame Nellie Butt, especially since his father created the Orange Ormulu in honor of Dame Janine Ormulu
Nunco, who invented the Strawberry Sackville for Dame Wendy Sackville
Imposo, who created the Apple Glazier for Dame Margyreen Glazier
Lisa Delight, retired opera singer
Ron and Sid, opera house chefs
Ronald Pants aka "Really" Pants (mentioned)
Farter Carter (mentioned; probably not his real name)
Trusset, a wizard with good hair, contemporary of Ponder Stibbons
"Rubber" Houser, wizard who invented the Graphical Device
Cartwright, an XXXX-ian wizard
Salid, an artist (possibly a wizard artist?)
Clive, Shirl, and Gerleen, XXXX-ers who wish to emigrate to Ankh-Morpork
Germaine Trifle, opera singer
Bluey, XXXX-ian watchman

[edit] Locations

Ankh-Morpork
- The Unseen University
  - Museum of Quite Unusual Things (mentioned)
  - High Energy Magic Building (mentioned)
  - Library
    - Lost Reading Room (mentioned)
  - Room 5b (mentioned)
- Moon Pond Lane (mentioned), Librarian's birth street
- Opera House (mentioned; when stranded on a deserted island, the Dean wishes to listen to the music there), not to be confused with the Bugarup Opera House mentioned below

XXXX
- Dijabringabeeralong
  - Semaphore Hill (mentioned)
- Bugarup
  - Bugarup Gaol
  - Berk Street (mentioned)
  - Bludgeree (mentioned), area of town(?) where Fair Go Dibbler was born
    - Treacle Street (mentioned), Fair Go Dibbler's birth street
  - Opera House
  - Grurt Street (mentioned)
  - Bugarup University
- Pastoral Hotel (mentioned)
- Cangoolie (mentioned), parodies Kalgoorlie
- Worralorrasurfa, Neilette's home town

Mono Island, an island near XXXX similar to New Zealand

Slakki and Purdee Island, nudist islands

Quirm (mentioned)
- Kiddling Street (mentioned)

Klatch (mentioned)

Omnia (mentioned)

NoThingfjord (mentioned), Mad's home town

Sumtri (mentioned)

Bhangbhangduc (mentioned), a place whose name parodies "bang! bang! duck" (ie, telling someone to duck after bullets have been shot)

Quint, city destroyed by God of Evolution

[edit] Concepts, Items, Events

slood (mentioned)
Ceremony of the Keys, parodying the Roundworld events with the same name.
L-Space
Weezencake's Unreliable Algorithm
How to Dynamically Manage People for Dynamic Results in a Caring Empowering Way in Quite a Short Time Dynamically, a truly hideous book from another universe
droit de mortis, killing senior wizards to speed promotion
Old Tom, university's tongueless clock
Wasport's Lives of the Very Dull People, a book
Wrencher's Snakes of All Nations, a book
Dangerous Mammals, Reptiles, Amphibians, Birds, Fish, Jellyfish, Insects, Spiders, Crustaceans, Grasses, Trees, Mosses, and Lichens of Terror Incognita, an encyclopedia with at least 29 volumes (probably many more, as the volumes are further broken down by letter and number, eg, "29c, part 3")
drop-bears
Principles of Thaumic Propagation, a studious book that turns into The Omega Conspiracy, a frivolous book
Theoretical frivolous books
- The Gamma Imperative
- The Delta Season
- The Alpha Project
- The Mu Kappa Pi Caper
dwarf bread
the Triangle, a constellation
The Small Boring Group of Faint Stars, a constellation
thunder lizard, animal that killed Egregious Professor of Cruel and Unusual Geography, but later turned into a chicken. A literal translation into Greek of the term "Thunder Lizard" is Brontosaurus.
Roo Beer, a light sparkly (but still quite alcoholic) beer
Sapu tree, a carnivorous plant
Sledgehammer Plant of Bhangbhangduc, a carnivorous plant
Pyramid Strangler Vine, a normally vegetarian plant
Two Up, game, parodying the Roundworld game of the same name
Tie My Kangaroo Up, a song parodying Tie Me Kangaroo Down, Sport
squid, unit of currency (probably parodies 'quid', slang term for British pound) The pound (£AUS) was the unit of currency in Australia until supplanted by the dollar ($AUS) in the 1950's.
Mugroop's Syndrome, symptom of high magical field
meat pie floater, XXXX specialty cuisine
Peach Nellie, a dessert
The Galah, celebration of alternative lifestyles, parodying the Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras, Australia's largest gay/lesbian event. Probably the reason why the University doesn't enforce Rules One, Three, Five and Seven.
Funnelweb, a type of beer, parodying Redback Beer (both named after spiders)
Maxwell's Impressive Separator and Bonza Charlie's Beaut Sieve, two similar spells that can separate two things (eg, salt and water from saltwater)
HW chromosome, something wizards lack (HW = housework?)

[edit] Annotations

The mechanism by which the Wizards land on Mono Island is via the window in the rooms allocated to the Egregious Professor of Cruel and Unusual Geography at Unseen University. This almost exactly parellels the plot device of the Dr. Who episode Shada, written by Douglas Adams, which he later re-wrote as a sci-fi mystery tale featuring paranormal investigator Dirk Gently. (Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency[1]). In Adams' story, the mysterious Regius Professor of Chronology [2] at a semi-fictitious Cambridge college (St Cedd's) has the traditional don's suite of rooms at the university. But these are effectively a Tardis, allowing him access to any point of space and time - via the window. Its first overt use is to visit the island of Mauritus, several hundred years ago, to see living dodos before the human race wipes them out.

This is one of the few times someone gets away with calling the Librarian a "monkey". An anonymous and lucky Ecksian wizard also gets away weith it on page 388 (Corgi PB).

Death confirms that Rincewind will escape Bugarup prison. Earlier in the book, Death has no idea when Rincewind will die. So how does know Rincewind will escape? Maybe he sees that Rincewind has enough sand for at least a few more days of life? Though this would seem unlikely, given references to Rincewind's hourglass being like a hiccuping glassblower's nightmare, to the extent that even Death didn't know when the fastest wizzard on the Disc was going to pop his (pointy) clogs.

The Chair of Indefinite Studies refers to the Librarian (in book form) as "The Story of Ook", parodying the Roundworld The Story of O

Rincewind asks Scrappy about a magic sword, probably forgetting the terrible experience he had with Kring

In Bugarup, Rincewind seems surprised that XXXX has wizards, but the road gang he meets earlier is familiar with wizards, and the chefs at the opera house also mention wizards.

The "Small Boring Group of Faint Stars" is fairly bright when the wizards travel back in time. If the ancients named it, why did they call it faint and boring (did they know it would become so in several thousand years?) Or have the wizards simply travelled back far, far beyond the time of the stars being named?

Rincewind introduces the concept of parrots to XXXX. They already exist outside XXXX as we see in Moving Pictures and Eric

"Gods turning themselves into bulls ... [s]wans ... [s]howers of gold". Zeus did all these things, in pursuit of Europa, Leda, and Danae respectively.

"You know, I've often wondered about that one [showers of gold]". "Golden shower" is slang for urinating on someone for mutual sexual pleasure. In Pyramids, the expression "golden shower" is used explicitly, a more direct version of this joke.

Baboon's behinds are mentioned in this book, Moving Pictures, and Interesting Times.

The concept of "if you were marooned on a desert island... what kind of music would you like to listen to" is fairly old, but may be a parody of Desert Island Discs.

"Dame Nellie Butt". If XXXX doesn't have royalty (and it doesn't appear to), how did Nellie get to be a Dame? On Roundworld, Australia recognizes English royalty, but XXXX appears to be cutoff from any known Discworld royalty. Does Dame just mean "opera singer" on XXXX?

Well, the Discworld has pantomime Dames - it is entirely possible that XXXX refined the concept of men dressing as women for entertainment until it reached its apogee in the form of Petunia the Desert Princess.

And on Roundworld, of course, one of Australia's great entertainment exports is Barry Humphries, also known as Dame Edna Everage. Could it be that at least some Fourecksian opera dames have more than may meet the eye at first glance?

Rincewind laments that he "never had a relative before", apparently forgetting about Lavaeolus

Ridcully refers to XXXX as a "colony", parodying the way British people look down on British colonies.(Canadians, Australians and New Zealanders in Great Britain are sometimes fondly referred to as "colonials"). Of course, there's no evidence that XXXX is a colony of Ankh-Morpork - except for a strangely different form of Morporkian being spoken by the natives, and the suggestion that the country was founded by shipwrecked survivors from the main continent, of whom Ankh-Morporkians would have predominated. Conversely, General Tacticus might not have stopped at Genua even though, strictly speaking, by then he wasn't conquering for Ankh-Morpork any more... is it also posible that a wilier earlier ruler of A-M, knowing that things could find their way into XXXX but not out of it again, used the island as a penal colony, strictly one-way travel only?

"Can you hear that thunder? ... We'd better take cover..." are lines from the song Down Under

A footnote mentions that books on holiday turn into books "with a name containing at least one Greek word or letter", even though Greece doesn't exist on the Discworld. Not necessarily an error: perhaps this transformation is cross-dimensional; also consider that footnotes are a way for an author to communicate directly with the reader, rather than via the story, and so do not have to stay "in character". The orthography used in Ephebe is in any case suspiciously akin to the Greek alphabet - regard the inscription on the Summer Lady's cornucopia in Wintersmith.

[Corgi PB page 367] "We can't have women in the University!" shouted the Dean, "They'll want to drink sherry!" Many of the cultural references in this book are to Australian consumer goods, mainly beers

(ref. XXXX itself) and to the way they have been advertised in Great Britain. Pratchett is here alluding to a TV advert for Castlemaine XXXX beer, where a group of hardy Outback farmers trek to the nearest off-licence to load up a flatbed truck with crates of beer for a party. As an afterthought, they agree that "we'd better get a couple of bottles of sherry in for the ladies". The two sherry bottles then sit incongrously on top of hundreds of tins of beer. The truck is then seen to creak ominously on its rear axle. The guys then agree it's dangerously overloaded and they need to take something off. They opt to leave the sherry behind...