Book 22: The Last Continent

The Last Continent deals with the adventures of Rincewind, one of the Discworld's most popular characters, in XXXX, a place that the author describes as 'not Australia, just slightly Australian'. This is important: remember that however much the continent may look like Australia, it isn't.

Rincewind the incompetent wizard is easily the most-travelled character on the Disc, having explored not only this world but several others besides, mostly at high speed. This book is important in that it completes his (and our) tour of the Discworld itself. And since Rincewind is the Eternal Prometheus of the series, it once again falls to him to save the continent from a terrible fate, by making it rain. The complications arise because the wizards of Unseen University follow him to the continent and find themselves several thousand years in the past, where they tread on some beetles and change history.

Pratchett describes the creation of the Last Continent as essentially a process of engineering. We meet not one but two rival creator-gods in this book: an old man with a sack, who draws his designs out carefully, and the God of Evolution, who sticks each animal together individually. These two represent two rival approaches to engineering: one based on conceptualising, planning and drawing an aesthetically pleasing product (the Leonardo da Vinci model), the other on tireless experimentation to see what works (the Thomas Edison approach).

The difference can be compared to that between the American design-for-manufacture model and the Japanese kaizen approach of constant tinkering, with products changing as quickly as consumers' tastes. When the tinkerer complains of the terrible amount of noise from the new continent going up next door, this is a sly dig at the cultural differences between the quiet, soft-spoken Japanese and the brash, aggressive Americans. The American designs things as a visionary, in broad strokes, while the Japanese engineer gets right into the guts of his creations and works out which bit of an elephant makes the ears waggle.

It is tempting to extend the engineering metaphor from creation to the later states of the continents. The Japanese god's small island is well managed, hospitable but high maintenance, an ecosystem based on catering to the individual and changing needs of every one of its few inhabitants. The American continent is bleak and environmentally devastated, its impersonal engineering leading to a lethally hostile landscape where only the people are friendly and hospitable. The post-apocalyptic feel of the Last Continent, reminiscent of 'Mad Max', cries out for a hero - Rincewind the Road Warrior - to save it from dying under the weight of its own misbegotten rules: a subtle political dig at modern America's fixation with private property and individual freedom at all costs.

Mike Kew

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