Peter S. Beagle and Sir Terry Pratchett

So, recently I re-read THE LAST UNICORN again for the first time in decades (say, about thirty years). I don't think it's aged well, but there was a time when this was widely considered one of the major works in post-Tolkien fantasy, the one that carried on the gentle, wistful tradition of Nathan into a new era.


Reading it now, after all these years, I was struck by the following passage

"Let me tell you a story," said Schmendrick. "As a child I was apprenticed to the mightiest magician of all, the great Nikos . . . But even Nikos . . . could not change me into so much as a carnival cardsharp. At last he said to me, 'My son, your ineptitude is so vast, your incompetence so profound, that I am certain you are inhabited by a greater power than I have ever known. Unfortunately, it seems to be working backward at the moment, and even I can findno way to set it right. It must be that you are meant to findyour own way to reach your power in time; but frankly,you should live so long as that will take you. ThereforeI grant it that you shall not age from this day forth, but will travel the / world round and round, eternally inefficient, until at last you come to yourself and know what you are.Don't thank me. I tremble at your doom.' "

--This suddenly sounded to me rather like Pratchett's description of Rincewind, his haplessly inept wizard in THE COLOUR OF MAGIC and THE LIGHT FANTASTIC -- a wizard who cdn't do any magic because as an apprentice he'd looked into the world's most powerful spellbook and one of the Eight spells that make reality jumped from the book into his head, scaring off any other spells from ever entering it. Coincidence, perhaps, but it did make me wonder if a little bit of Pratchett's inspiration might have come from the older book.

We also watched the Rankin-Bass animated film of THE LAST UNICORN for the first time. It was all too horribly familiar with the Rankin-Bass HOBBIT, right down to sharing some of the voice actors --except here that THE HOBBIT got the better deal on the voices (John Huston, Richard Boone) and THE LAST UNICORN on the theme songs (America rather than ever-warbly Glenn Yarborough). Some time capsules shd stay closed.

--John R.
audiobook: HPL's DAGON, Agatha Christie's THE MURDER OF ROGER ACKROYD