Talk:Book:Small Gods

• Forgot to log in, 80.142.152.11 was me. --Jogibaer 22:10, 9 Aug 2005 (CEST)

Hi, the claim in the Annotations section that Small Gods 'presumably takes place centuries before moving pictures' is not referenced or backed up. In fact there's very good reason to think it untrue:

• Firstly, as the note itself says, the Century of the Fruitbat is referred to as the current period, placing it within 100 years of the main sequence of novels.
• Secondly, the Death of Rats appears. He was only created in Reaper Man, ergo this comes after it unless we are to believe he time travelled too.
• Thirdly, the Ephebean philosophers are the same as the ones in Pyramids, which is also well placed in the main sequence.
• Fourthly, in Carpe Jugulum, some people still don't know that Omnia has been reformed. This seems unlikely if it's reformation was many years previous.

I've seen the quote on the Book of Tobrun from Thief of Time taken as proof of Brutha's reign being 10 years previously. I don't think this interpretation is correct. The exact quote is:

"The Book of Tobrun has not been considered official church dogma for a hundred years. The prophet Brutha revealed that the whole chapter was a metaphor for a power struggle within the early church."

Some have taken this to mean that the Book of Tobrun was dropped from the church dogma because Brutha showed it was a metaphor. However, there's no evidence for that. If the two sentences were linked with a semi-colon I might be more convinced. Instead, it can be equally well interpreted as two separate statements: the Book has not been official Dogma for a century and, recently, the prophet has explained its metaphorical nature.

All that's a long way of saying, if the page is going to claim Small Gods doesn't fit in the main timeline, it should really justify it. LordJuss 13:43, 17 June 2009 (UTC)

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No one even remembers Brutha in person, and he was Cenobiarch for one hundred years, so whatever the century was called, it couldn't have been the current one.
Death ignores time; perhaps the Death of Rats too.
Are they the same philosophers, or just the same stereotypes or academic roles?
People in Lancre won't have heard from Omnia one way or the other lately.
I guess you could interpret the Tobrun quote that way; like the schisms of the Omnian Church, the question may never be settled. I think Sir Pterence does it on purpose. --Old Dickens 23:24, 17 June 2009 (UTC)

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Thanks for responding (I'm glad someone did)

Taking the points in order...

• Where's the reference for no one remembering Brutha in person. If there is a quote I'm happy to address it, but a statement isn't enough.

• On the same point, true he was Cenobiarch for 100 years but why assume that those 100 years end before the current books. If Brutha is Cenobiarch *now* and dies in 100 year's time, that still fits.

• I'll give you Death's domain is out of time but in every appearance he visits people in chronological order.

• Maybe on the philosophers - difficult to say.

• Lancre may not hear much from Omnia but to not hear anything for at least a century. I'm not convinced - but this one's a judgement call.

Agreed, Sir Pterry has given us little information to go on. Maybe it amuses him. Still, fundamentally, if people are going to claim Small Gods is in the past I'd like a quote that backs that up. LordJuss 15:14, 18 June 2009 (UTC)

Then let's say there's no record of Brutha in contemporary times, unless you have one, and where he's mentioned it seems to be as a historical figure. If you want to posit that events which are described as as having happened will not actually happen for a hundred years (though that could be the solution) there's no point in trying to establish any timeline; there is no time as we know it. I think all these points have been discussed long since in the DW Timeline with no general agreement, but I find the length of Brutha's career and the lack of reference to him as a contemporary in any other book the most significant argument.
(Are you a single-Patrician supporter as well?) --Old Dickens 22:06, 18 June 2009 (UTC)