Magazines

A new phenomenon to the disc, these are crudely printed woodblock broadsheets produced in Ankh-Morpork, all at the same address. Nothing is known about the company concerned but there is a distinct possibility that the name C.M.O.T. Dibbler is involved.

Some specialist hobby magazines are self-published by enthusiasts, such as those catering for the pin-collecting craze.

There are also religious polemics such as Unadorned Facts, published by the Omnian religion and faithfully distributed door-to-door by missionary workers such as Constable Visit of the Ankh-Morpork City Watch.

The generally shoddy quality of Disc magazines seems about to take a long-needed step upwards. As a sideline from newspaper publishing, the Ankh-Morpork Times seems poised to start publishing specialist magazines, one named example being The Lady's Home Companion, editress Sacharissa Cripslock. With the advent of reliable colour reproduction, a new phenomenon has arrived on the Disc: soft-core erotica of the Girls, Giggles and Garters persuasion. This is an unintended side-effect of the Times' press-dwarfs discovering the technology to make reproduction of colour iconographs reliably, and fairly speedily and quickly. No doubt, with their flair for business, Boddony and Goodmountain have entered a pragmatic arrangement with outside publishers to print anything to order - including G,G& G - so as to minimise down-time in between print runs of the times.

Magazines known on the Disc include:

• The Acuphile Digest
• The Ankh-Morpork Literary Gazette and Paradigm Shifters' Monthly
• Back Alley Pins (for the adult connisseur). Also referred to in The Compleat Ankh-Morpork as Back Street Pins
• the Battle Cry
• Beaks and Talons
• Beginning Pins(a part-work with a new pin every week)
• Bows and Ammo
• Bu-Bubble
• the Burleigh and Spoke Fully Illustrated Catalogue, which may be posted under a plain brown wrapper.
• Care And Nutrition For Swamp Dragons
• Extreme Pins
• Fang & Fire
• Girls, Giggles and Garters
• Golem spotter Weekly
• The Lady's Home Companion
• The Ladies' Own Magazine
• Modern Pins
• New Pins
• Pins and Pinneries
• Pins Extra
• Pins International
• Pins Monthly
• Pin Times
• Pins World
• Popular Armour
• Practical Pins
• Practical Siege Weapons
• Slab
• Stanley Howler's Stamp Monthly
• Stifte! (imported from Überwald)
• Talking Pins
• The Tanty Bugle
• Total Pins (ed. Stanley)
• Unadorned Facts
• Warrior of Fortune
• What Gallows
• World Pin
• World of Pins

Of course, with the burgeoning craze for stamps, it could be the case that many of the pin-related magazines are now defunct for lack of readership...

Possible titles discussed by William de Worde and Sacharissa Cripslock:-

• Completely Cake
• Completely Cats
• Completely Knitting
• Completely Men
• Completely Women

Annotation

When Moist von Lipwig goes into Dave's Pin Exchange to look for a copy of Total Pins, in order to find the right levers to allow him to get a grip on the mind of Stanley, so as to to get one of the postmen on his side, a comic exchange ensues. This is reminiscent of those classic comedy sketches which depend on the funny man going through an extensive catalogue of products, for the benefit of the straight man. Think of Mel Smith's Geordie barman in Not the Nine O'Clock News, who when asked for "a pint of lager" by Gryff Rhys Jones, takes so long to go through all the available choices (forty or fifty increasingly improbably named lagers, served via bottle, glass, or aerosol) that the Time bell rings, and the hapless Jones doesn't get a drink at all.

Or consider Michael Palin going through all the cheeses that aren't in stock, to an increasingly exasperated John Cleese... so it is with Pinhead Dave, listing all the available pin-fanciers' magazines at such length that Moist drifts off, somewhat concussed, in the middle of the recitation.