History Literature / TheScienceOfDiscworld

!!'''''The Science of Discworld'' series contains examples of:'''

* ExactWords: What are the chances of Ponder's thaum-splitting magical reactor "just blowin' up and destroyin' the entire university?" None at all. If it goes up, it won't just blow up the university - it'll destroy the entire Discworld.

* NoodleImplements: While preparing for Shakespeare to write ''AMidsummerNightsDream'', the Wizards run into various problems that Ridcully solves via a set of noodle implements. Most of the time the reader can easily figure out what he is going to do with them (The sole exception being related to a folk remedy that is explained in one of the science chapters).

* DesperateObjectCatch: Rincewind drops the glass globe containing Roundworld when the Bursar pops up suddenly, then just barely catches it with a DivingSave.

* In ''The Science of Discworld III: Darwin's Watch'', the wizards must stop the God of Evolution from seriously confusing CharlesDarwin, while Stewart and Cohen discuss his theory in more detail than they had to spare in the first book.

* BeethovenWasAnAlienSpy: Creator/WilliamShakespeare and [[CharlesDarwin Darwin]], amongst others, are greatly influenced by the wizards.

* GainaxEnding: * GainaxEnding: The first book ends with a giant, unliving turtle being spontaneously constructed in Roundworld space. "Recursion Is Occurring."

* GainaxEnding: The first book. "[[MindScrew Recursion Is Occurring]]".

* InSpiteOfANail: Apparently, if Darwin had become a believer in what we'd now call "intelligent design", UsefulNotes/RichardDawkins would have been the author of ''The Origin Of Species'', sadly too late to make a difference. Which suggests that there's a historical imperative that Dawkins ''must'' be a Darwinist, ''even if Darwin isn't''.
** The data is there to be found, Darwin or no Darwin, but in this scenario Richard Dawkins is the only person bloody-minded enough to go against an established authority and mine out the inconsistencies of the widely accepted model. It's unlikely that Darwin's theory had anything in itself to do with Dawkins becoming an atheist in the first place.

* InSpiteOfANail: Apparently, if Darwin had become a believer in what we'd now call "intelligent design", RichardDawkins would have been the author of ''The Origin Of Species'', sadly too late to make a difference. Which suggests that there's a historical imperative that Dawkins ''must'' be a Darwinist, ''even if Darwin isn't''.

* AlternateHistory: several in the later books, all of them ending with [[spoiler: humanity failing to invent the SpaceElevator before it's Giant Snowball Time]].

* ArcWords: Each book has several core concepts that keep being re-stated in different contexts. The first book has LiesToChildren and the "SpaceElevator", which is a metaphor for doing something in such a way that it makes subsequent efforts easier, like building a space elevator so that you don't have to keep expending massive fuel payloads to launch things into space, or how DNA allows lifeforms to make copies of themselves by cheaply copying their existing genetic information. The second book keeps asserting that humans are not in the genus of ''homo'' but are instead ''pan narrans'', the "storytelling chimp".

* In ''The Science of Discworld IV: Judgement Day'', a sect of Omnian extremists start claiming Roundworld is evidence they were right all along about the shape of the world, and [[InsaneTrollLogic therefore]] it belongs to them, while a sceptical Roundworld librarian ends up on the Disc.

It was followed by three sequels: ''The Science of Discworld II: The Globe'', in which the wizards must stop TheFairFolk preying on the superstitious folk of Elizabethan Roundworld, while Stewart and Cohen talk about the nature of storytelling and belief, and ''The Science of Discworld III: Darwin's Watch'', in which the wizards stop the God of Evolution from seriously confusing CharlesDarwin, while Stewart and Cohen discuss his theory in more detail than they had to spare in the first book.

''The Science of Discworld IV: Judgement Day'' was announced at the 2012 Discworld Convention, and released 11 April 2013. In this one, a sect of Omnian extremists start claiming Roundworld is evidence they were right all along, and [[InsaneTrollLogic therefore]] it belongs to them, while a sceptical Roundworld librarian ends up on the Disc.

* TheWorldIsAlwaysDoomed: In the first book, the wizards become discouraged when Roundworld is repeatedly (As in, every several billion years or so), hit by a large comet or asteroid.

** I call BS. If the whole Discworld is destroyed, then by extension, the university is as well.