The Libertarian Futurist Society’s ongoing Appreciation series of review-essays strives to make clear what libertarian futurists see in each of our past winners and how they fit the libertarian focus of the Prometheus Awards. Here’s an Appreciation for Terry Pratchett’s Night Watch, the 2003 Prometheus winner for Best Novel:
By William H. Stoddard and Michael Grossberg
Night Watch, the 29th book in Terry Pratchett’s bestselling Discworld series and widely hailed as one of the best, focuses in his usual tongue-in-cheek style on what it takes to build a more-modern police force that eventually will be able to keep the peace and fight violent crime in one of the most unruly cities in fiction.
Filled with individualistic, anti-authoritarian and pragmatically libertarian themes that resonate with the actual history of our own planet and how market economies and modern civilization developed, this ingenious 2002 satirical fantasy blends political intrigue and police drama in a plot that also involves time travel back to the start of a legendary street rebellion.
After chasing after one of the most notorious killers in Ankh-Morpork, police commander Sam Vimes winds up in a magical-storm-induced time vortex that takes him back three decades to the days when young Sam Vimes first joined the watch.
Guided by a bunch of wise and spiritual wizards who can manipulate time, the older Vimes has to impersonate another significant character, murdered by the same psychopathic killer who also went back in time, in order to change history, save lives and serve as a mentor to his younger self.
And if the older Vimes doesn’t succeed at his unlikely quest and avert a historical crisis, the younger Vimes will never set in motion the beginnings of a revolution in police procedures – or his beloved town, so much darker and less advanced, will never become the thriving modern metropolis that readers of the Discworld series have come to know and love.
Beyond Pratchett’s sense of humor, quirky imagination, interesting plots and amusing but truly full-bodied characters, both human and otherwise, what many libertarians find so enjoyable about not only Nightwatch but many other Disc-World stories is how they realistically chronicle our real world’s actual economic, political and social development and scientific progress, so often fueled by liberty, dissent and the linked pursuit of knowledge and commerce.
LFS leader Wiliam Stoddard, writing for Prometheus quarterly, has praised Pratchett’s Discworld novels as “highly intelligent commentary on human foibles” and splendidly funny, too.
“But Pratchett’s work has another aspect that may recommend it to other libertarians: a surprisingly sympathetic intellectual content,” Stoddard explained in the Fall 2000 issue (Vol. 18) of Prometheus quarterly in an essay about the series as a whole.
“The Discworld is a fictional place, not a planet, but a vast disk carried through space on the backs of four elephants carried on he back of an even bigger turtle, in a universe where such things are possible. It is inhabited by a variety of intelligent races, including humans, dwarfs, trolls and werewolves. This big a space offers endless room for new settings, but Pratchett repeatedly comes back to Ankh-Morpork, the greatest city on the Disc.”
“Ankh-Morpork is an odd combination of an Italian Renaissance city-state and Victorian London, with a hint of Republican Rome in the background. It has no king – the last one was beheaded some time ago – and no faction strong enough to impose itself on anyone else. Its balance of power allows the growth of any number of private economic ventures and the accumulation of huge fortunes. None of this has any legal right to exist, and in effect Ankh-Morpork’s many centuries of laws are almost never enforced – which seems to be the secret of its survival and prosperity.”
“Several of the novels are police procedurals, with Commander sir Samuel Vimes, a descendant of the man who beheaded the city’s last king, as their central character. Pratchett’s portrayals of Vimes repeatedly emphasize his hatred of kings, aristocrats, vampires, professional assassins and other predators on the human race… The targets of his mockery are almost all deserving in libertarian eyes.”
In short, Pratchett’s surprisingly individualistic, anti-authoritarian and pragmatically libertarian stories often offer accurate lessons – disguised as very funny parodies – about the way markets actually work and have worked (messily) throughout history, the benefits of innovation and technology sparked by free markets, and how society advances right here on Earth – not through government and politics, but so often despite and around its bureaucracy and intrusive obstacles.
Note: Pratchett (1948-2015), a bestselling British sf/fantasy writer, is best known for the 41 comic-fantasy novels of his Discworld series.
He also was nominated for Prometheus Awards for Raising Steam, a 2015 Best Novel finalist; The Long War, co-authored by Stephen Baxter and a 2014 Best Novel nominee; Snuff, a 2012 Best Novel finalist; and The Truth, a 2001 Best Novel finalist. All but The Long War, part of a five-novel parallel-earth series, are Discworld novels.
* See related introductory essay about the LFS’ 40th anniversary retrospective series of Appreciations of past Prometheus Awards winners, with an overview of the awards’ four-decade history.
IF YOU WANT TO KNOW MORE ABOUT THE PROMETHEUS AWARDS:
* Prometheus winners: For the full list of Prometheus winners, finalists and nominees – including the annual Best Novel and Best Classic Fiction (Hall of Fame) categories and occasional Special Awards – visit the enhanced Prometheus Awards page on the LFS website, which now includes convenient links to all published essay-reviews in our Appreciation series explaining why each of more than 100 past winners since 1979 fits the awards’ distinctive dual focus on both quality and liberty.
* Read “The Libertarian History of Science Fiction,”an essay in the international magazine Quillette that favorably highlights the Prometheus Awards, the Libertarian Futurist Society and the significant element of libertarian sf/fantasy in the evolution of the modern genre.
* Watch videos of past Prometheus Awards ceremonies (including the recent 2023 ceremony with inspiring and amusing speeches by Prometheus-winning authors Dave Freer and Sarah Hoyt),Libertarian Futurist Society panel discussions with noted sf authors and leading libertarian writers, and other LFS programs on the Prometheus Blog’s Video page.
* Check out the Libertarian Futurist Society’s Facebook page for comments, updates and links to Prometheus Blog posts.
* Join us! To help sustain the Prometheus Awards and support a cultural and literary strategy to appreciate and honor freedom-loving fiction, jointhe Libertarian Futurist Society, a non-profit all-volunteer association of freedom-loving sf/fantasy fans.
Libertarian futurists believe that culture matters! We understand that the arts and literature can be vital in envisioning a freer and better future – and in some ways can be even more powerful than politics in the long run, by imagining better visions of the future incorporating peace, prosperity, progress, tolerance, justice, positive social change, and mutual respect for each other’s rights, individuality and human dignity.
