Mort
Death comes to us all. When he came to Mort, he offered him a job.Death is the Grim Reaper of the Discworld, a black-robed skeleton with a scythe who ushers souls into the next world. He is also fond of cats and endlessly baffled by humanity. Soon Death is yearning to experience what humanity really has to offer, but to do that, he'll need to hire some help.It's an offer Mort can't refuse. As Death's apprentice he'll have free board, use of the company horse—and being dead isn't compulsory. It's a dream job—until Mort falls in love with Death's daughter, Ysabell, and discovers that your boss can be a killer on your love life…
Stats for nerds
6recommend
19mentions
17people
2015–2025years
42% recommend58% neutral
Mentions per year
What Hacker News says
- I have been reading through the Discworld books in publication order, and they have been downright delightful.
I have only finished the first eleven, but thus far all of them have been fun and most of them have little nuggets of wisdom that really do invite thought into a deeper theme. Thus far my favorite has been Mort, but I also ended up really liking Sourcery as well.
I hadn’t read any Pratchett while he was still alive, I hadn’t even heard of him in fact, but given how prolific he was and the level of cleverness in his stories, I wish he was still alive.
- Ignoring the moral question in the story, many people are satisfied by saying "haha funny, the cat is both dead and alive" and they just move on.
Reading Pratchett for almost 30 years, it has fueled quite an interested in quantum mechanics in me, he subtly introduces QM teasers in almost every book I read. Particularly Mort.
As I dropped out of highschool, I didnt have the luck to properly study physics, but in my 30s, I my existential crisis hit, as they say, a man dies twice, and the stupid half dead cat wouldn't leave me alone. And one night the omnipotent youtube algorithm recommended Susskind's lectures to me, then Feynman, Shankar, .. it just kept going. Now I watch and re-watch them but take screenshots and send them to claude when I am confused (which is still most of the time).
If you are a layman like me and just want to know what is up with the cat, I encourage you to watch Sean Carroll's lectures (dont miss the Q&A videos) and it will for sure allow you to ask at least better questions.
I love that cat so much.
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Sean Carroll: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HI09kat_GeI&list=PLrxfgDEc2N...
Richard Feynman: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-kFOXP026eE&list=PLS3_1JNX8d... and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bAnnEiAjN6U&list=PLYZ3-8b-4z...
Leonard Susskind: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pyX8kQ-JzHI&list=PL6i60qoDQh...
Ramamurti Shankar: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uK2eFv7ne_Q&list=PLF366409F5...
Barton Zwiebach: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jANZxzetPaQ&list=PLUl4u3cNGP...
Carl Bender: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LYNOGk3ZjFM&list=PL43B1963F2...
If you struggle with calculus, I found Herb Gross to be partucularly good
Herb Gross: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MFRWDuduuSw&list=PL3B08AE665...
Of course watch 3blue1brown, alphaphoenix, styropyro etc as well
- I agree. I’m a big fan of the DEATH story arc, but outside of Mort and Reaper Man, Amazing Maurice might be my favorite book in the series. So very well written and felt like Pratchett was at his best.
- Greg Egan's Permutation City had a major influence on my own thoughts on consciousness and AI, as did Hofstadter's G.E.B. The Dust Theory in Permutation City is fairly mindblowing, and in a sense takes the ideas behind a Boltzmann brain to even further extremes.
Epictetus' Enchiridion helped me massively with depression and anxiety over the past few years. I still read a few excerpts from it weekly. Much of it is self evident, but it's reassuring and reinforcing.
The works of Terry Pratchett shaped my sense of humor, and my outlook on life. I would definitely be a different person today if I hadn't encountered Discworld at such an early age. They've made me a optimistic cynic.
I'd highly recommend anybody interested in starting the Discworld books to start with Mort, and then the rest of the Death series in order (Hogfather in particular).
- Mort, by Pratchett. It is a great introduction to the Discworld and one of my favorite books ever. It is a good read over the holidays and you’ll be thinking about some of the lines in it for years to come.
“ History isn't like that. History unravels gently, like an old sweater. It has been patched and darned many times, reknitted to suit different people, shoved in a box under the sink of censorship to be cut up for the dusters of propaganda, yet it always - eventually - manages to spring back into its old familar shape. History has a habit of changing the people who think they are changing it. History always has a few tricks up its frayed sleeve. It's been around a long time.”
- Discworld Series by Terry Pratchett. I’d start with the DEATH series (Mort is first book in that one) but a lot of folks like the City Watch. (Guards! Guards!). Lighthearted, hilarious, and some real insights into the human condition in a tongue in cheek way.
Can’t go wrong, good vacation reads. M
