Discworld

:Diskworld, spelled with a "k", was a disk magazine for the Apple Macintosh, later renamed Softdisk for Mac.

Stealth Philosophy

Throughout many of his novels, Pratchett employs what has been dubbed "Stealth Philosophy". That is to say, he will subtly (or not-so-subtly) hide philosophical struggles, questions, and arguments within the texts of his books, without (often) overtly stating them. Pratchett is deeply concerned about the philosophy of ethics, the philosophy of religion, the mind as well as topics related to popular science - lampooning the usual misunderstandings of things like quantum physics and relativity.

Related Topics:
Philosophy of ethics - Philosophy of religion - Mind - Popular science - Quantum physics - Relativity

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His good witch, Granny Weatherwax, takes the form of an archetypical evil crone:

Related Topics:
Good witch - Granny Weatherwax

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:Mrs Earwig would definitely have objected to the cottage. It was out of storybook. The walls leaned against one another for support, the thatched roof was slipping off like a bad wig, and the chimneys were corkscrewed. If you thought a gingerbread house would be too fattening, this was the next worst thing.

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:"In a cottage deep in the forest lived the wicked old witch ..."

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:It was a cottage out of the nastier kind of fairy tale.

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:– A Hat Full of Sky

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His good public servant, Lord Havelock Vetinari, is an assassin and a tyrant.

Related Topics:
Havelock Vetinari - Assassin - Tyrant

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In general, he presents the notion that to be good quite often results in being perceived as bad or evil by the very people you're doing good for, and in many of his stories image is quite often eventually overcome, without fanfare, by substance.

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:Some people will do anything for the sheer fascination of doing it, said Death. Or for fame. Or because they shouldn't.

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:– Hogfather

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In the "elf" books as elsewhere, he presents the notion that our "world" is subjective, and is constructed internally. In particular, that it is constructed out of stories. Related to this is the idea that most of our experience is filtered out before it reaches conciousness:

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:You build little worlds, little stories, little shells around your mind and that keeps infinity at bay and allows you to wake up in the morning without screaming!

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:– A Hat Full of Sky

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:"All right," said Susan, "I'm not stupid. You're saying humans need ... fantasies to make life bearable."

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:No. Humans need fantasy to be human. To be the place where the falling angel meets the rising ape.

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:"Tooth faries? Hogfathers?"

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:Yes. As practice. You have to start out learning to believe the little lies.

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:"So we can believe the big ones?"

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:Yes. Justice. Mercy. Duty. That sort of thing.

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:"They're not the same at all!"

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:Take the universe and grind it down to the finest powder and sieve it through the finest sieve and then show me one atom of justice. And yet you act as if there were some sort of rightness in the universe by which it may be judged.

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:"Yes. But people have got to believe that or what's the point—"

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:My point exactly.

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:– Hogfather

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A large portion of Carpe Jugulum is about internal "struggles", and how pieces of our mind do not always agree with other pieces of our mind (And how some of us feel we have "Darker" selves within us, that we keep deep, deep down). Aside from the obviously "split" mind character (Perdita and Agnes), it is shown that even characters as decisive as Granny Weatherwax have inner "selves" that they struggle with.

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