Celebrating 40 years of The Colour of Magic!
The Discworld series of books has been around for what seems like a lifetime, with 41 books in the main series and a huge amount of companions, maps, atlases, colouring books and short stories, Discworld has been in people's consciousness for almost as long as I have been on this planet.
It all started, however, with a set of 4 short stories which featured Rincewind the inept wizard and Twoflower, the Discworld's first tourist which were published by Colin Smythe Publishing as the book we love The Colour of Magic on 24th Nov 1983.
We all fell head over heels in love with the Luggage and marvelled at Rincewind's amazing ability to stay alive. Twoflower's constant positivity at all the chaos and potential death inducing moments keeps the stories humourous whilst also giving us, the readers, a firm view of the planet we were going to spend the next 40 years wishing we were living on.
Terry Pratchett was never going to be a fantasy writer, he wanted to write serious science fiction, how different would things be if he had never written The Colour of Magic.
Tonight we will raise a glass to the book that started the Discworld swimming, we hope you will too.
If you don't own a copy, you can grab one via our Bookshop