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The Small Gods Question


When did Small Gods occur?

The prevailing wisdom has it that it occurred some time before the events of the main chronicles.

Two sets of character links falsify this hypothesis.

  1. The philosophers from Pyramids appear in Small Gods. The final clincher is the fact that both Reaper Man and Small Gods occur, according to the texts, in the Year of the Notional Serpent.
  2. Dr Cruces appears in Pyramids and Men At Arms.

Hence Small Gods is tied to the same era as Men At Arms. This allows the Death of Rats (created in Reaper Man) to exist during Small Gods. This also means that the Librarian didn't need an lspace time portal, just a space portal, to rescue books from the library.

I think that Small Gods comes after Pyramids, in part due to the appearance of a Djelibeybian contingent in the fleet that attacked Omnia at the end of the book. Would a pre-Pyramids Djelibeybi have taken part in such a war? (granted an extremely pre-period one would but not the one we see at the opening of Pyramids). The century is also confirmed as being the Century of the Fruitbat.

A quotation with reguards to the Librarian and the Fire seems to suggest that the Librarian "travelled back in time" to the Fire. I see no problem with this. As the bulk of the novel conclusively takes place in the Year of the Notional Serpent, Century of the Fruitbat - the librarian only has to travel from a point where that year "appears in the history books". I've assumed 30 years hence for the purposes of the timeline.

See Timeline Thoughts for comments on The Small Gods Question.


Vetinari

The exact start of Lord Vetinari's reign is unclear. Some postulate that he was Patrician in The Colour Of Magic, though this patrician sounds very fat and excessive in his tastes. Death is celebrating the 10th anniversary of the ascension of a patrician in Mort - but not necessarily Vetinari.

See Timeline Thoughts for further evidence that Snapcase is the Patrician celebrating his 10th anniversary in Mort.


The Next Century?

At the end of Pyramids , Gern tells Dil that they are now in the Century of the Cobra rather than the Fruitbat (paperback - page 267). However we also know that the century after the Fruitbat is the century of the Anchovy according to Verence's comments in Carpe Jugulum.

The Century of the Cobra might have been an earlier century - perhaps when Khuft founded Djelebeybi.


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