Hacker News Books

Which drop of rain caused the dam to break? In the book Good Omens there is a demon who considered himself the best not because he was the best deceiver or torturer, but because of his ability to cause mass malcontent.

The real evil isn’t in the experiment, it’s that the researchers found that Facebook makes people’s lives worse. How many suicides are caused by Facebook’s investors? Whether they can mitigate it this way or that is splitting hairs.

Sourcery is about a power beyond the world taking itself off the world. Literally someone realising: "power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely" and taking themselves outside the universe for a good telling off. The sourceror turned out to be a girl but whatevs (7th son of a 7th son etc). She nearly caused a bit of a wobble in a universe already a Rizzla paper thickness away from some distressing oddness. However, the potential cause never wanted and eventually averts things going totally Pete.

Good Omens is a damn fine spin on the Christian apocalypse as described in quite some detail in John. There is the full on Angel vs Demon thing with a bloody great Hell Hound. Anyone who knows Jack Russells knows that they have a roughly 50/50 chance vs anything up to and including a nuclear weapon (which will either be shaken to death or sha ..... fzzzzt.) The Dog is almost certainly a JR.

Anyway, I digress. There are clear similarities but distinct differences between the two books.

Sourcery: One individual nearly caused armageddon but took themself away to avoid it

Good Omens: The universe's squishy contents tried to destroy the whole material plane and tripped over its own shoelaces

“Two years of Newtrition investment and research had produced CHOW™. CHOW™ contained spun, plaited, and woven protein molecules, capped and coded, carefully designed to be ignored by even the most ravenous digestive tract enzymes; no-cal sweeteners; mineral oils replacing vegetable oils; fibrous materials, colourings, and flavourings. The end result was a foodstuff almost indistinguishable from any other except for two things. Firstly, the price, which was slightly higher, and secondly the nutritional content, which was roughly equivalent to that of a Sony Walkman. It didn't matter how much you ate, you lost weight[1].

[1] And hair. And skin tone. And, if you ate enough of it long enough, vital signs.”

- Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman, Good Omens (1990)