Which is First?

[rabbit]

The Fifth Elephant or Going Postal?
I can't tell.  They reference events that haven't happened yet in both, but which have happened in one of them.

[Joe]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Fifth_Elephant

The Fifth Elephant is the 24th Discworld novel by Terry Pratchett. The title is a reference to the Fifth Element. It introduces the Clacks, a long-distance semaphore system.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Going_Postal

Going Postal (ISBN 0-385-60342-8, published by Doubleday) is Terry Pratchett's 33rd Discworld novel, released in the United Kingdom on September 25, 2004. Unusually for a Discworld novel (other than the children's books and the Science of Discworlds) Going Postal is divided into chapters. These chapters begin with a synopsis of philosophical themes, in a similar manner to some Victorian novels and, notably, to Jules Verne stories. This experiment was not continued with the next novel, Thud!

EDIT -
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discworld contains the full list.

[iago]

Yeah, Going Postal is one of the newest, whereas The Fifth Elephant is older.

Find the website called "The L-space" or maybe "The Lspace" -- it's the best site for Pratchett info.  There's also alt.fans.pratchett, but that's got a ton of crap.

[rabbit]

Very nice, thanks.

I can see from this that I've missed 2 of the Watch novels...hrm.

[iago]

Hmm, that could have been handy to have back in The Day.  But I just read them sort of randomly, then a couple years later I went back and read the serieses in order. 

I own all the books and keep them in order above my fireplace (at home -- not where I'm living now).  I'm very proud.  I'm looking forward to his next book, whenever it comes.  "Thud!" was really good.

[rabbit]

What confused me is that in The Fifth Elephant, mail coaches were running in Uberwald, and clacks towers were just going up, but in Going Postal the mail coaches JUST started running and went to Genua, and didn't run for 50 years previous, and all the clacks towers were up, and in the process of falling down again.  Also, Vimes is specifically mentioned, and as Commander.  That's why I was confused...

Anyway, I'm going to pick up the other Watch ones I missed, then the ones connected to Going Postal, and then I'll probably read the Death series.