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The very first ''[[Discworld]]'' novel, from 1983. Unlike most of the later ones, it was primarily a vehicle for [[Terry Pratchett]] to ''directly'' mock, play with, and deconstruct other fantasy series, rather than the much broader field of his later work. Introduced his interest in using nuclear physics (his previous area of expertise as a scientific journalist) as a metaphor and parody for how magic works.▼
| title = The Colour of Magic
| image =
| caption =
| author = Terry Pratchett
| central theme =
| elevator pitch = A [[picaresque]] across the [[Discworld]]
| genre = Fantasy
| franchise = Discworld
| preceded by =
| followed by = The Light Fantastic
| publication date = 1983
}}
▲The very first ''[[Discworld]]'' novel, from 1983. Unlike most of the later ones,
Written as a travelogue in which cowardly failed wizard Rincewind and [[Fish Out of Water]] Twoflower, the world's first tourist, travel much of the Disc while running away from things with big teeth and men with swords.
Was adapted (with quite a lot of [[Adaptation Distillation]]) by Sky TV in 2007, together with ''[[
Unlike later ''Discworld'' novels, is split into six parts rather than a continuous chapterless piece.
The titular Colour of Magic is Octarine, the eighth colour, the pigment of the imagination. Depending on the scene, it's either invisible or blacker than black if you aren't a creature that can see magic, like a wizard or cat. If you can see magic, it's a sort of disappointing purplish-greenish-yellow.
Fantasy directly parodied includes:
* [[Fafhrd and The Gray Mouser]] (Bravd and the Weasel, and the whole opening chapters with Ankh-Morpork burning. The initial characterization of Death as an actively malevolent being who directly kills people was also taken from here. The name of the city Ankh-Morpork is only coincidentally similar to Leiber's Lankhmar, though; Pratchett has denied being consciously influenced).
* [[Dragonriders of Pern|Pern]] (The Dragons of the Wyrmbeg, especially since the riders use exclamation marks in their names in a similar way to how McCaffrey's Dragonriders use apostrophes.)
* [[Dungeons
* [[H.P. Lovecraft]] (Bel-Shamharoth's temple.)
* [[Michael Moorcock]] (The concept of the Eternal Hero and the Companion to Champions. Rincewind as an incompetent ''Elric'' who can neither cast spells nor use weapons. The Black Sword that sucks souls to Hell
{{tropelist}}
* [[Alien Geometries]]: Bel-Shamharoth's temple is made up of eight-sided stone slabs. Yes, ''only'' eight-sided stone slabs (although it doesn't say they're ''convex'' octagons)...
* [[All Amazons Want Hercules]]: Liessa Wyrmbidder and Hrun the barbarian.
* [[Anti-Hero]]: Rincewind, who is not merely cowardly but surprisingly greedy compared with his later appearances.
** At this point, he hasn't had his fill of cruel and unusual geography and still expects to be a great wizard, with all that entails, so being greedy is understandable.
* [[Astronomic Zoom]]: Literary version. Most other ''Discworld'' books go on to start in this way, but ''The Colour of Magic'' has the most drawn-out one (unsurprising, as it needs to set the scene and describe the mechanics of the Discworld).
* [[Attack of the Monster Appendage]]: Bel-Shamaroth, which can be considered both type 1 and type 2.
* [[Barbarian Hero]]: Hrun and Bravd.
* [[Bilingual Bonus]]: Zweiblumen = Twoflower.
* [[Blinding Camera Flash]]: The [[Cosmic Horror]] Bel-Shamharoth is defeated when {{spoiler|Twoflower's camera flashes in his eye
* [[Blow Gun]]: The leader of the Assassin Guild uses a blowgun as his weapon.
* [[Blue and Orange Morality]]: [[Eldritch Abomination|Bel-Shamharoth]]. If you see Good and Evil as two sides of a coin, Bel-Shamharoth is the edge of the coin.
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** Death here is a sadistic murderer and casual killer, very ''very'' much unlike his later sympathetic portrayal.
** Could be said of the Assassin's Guild as whole, which here consists simply of dangerous thugs rather than the much more refined hired killers of the later books.
** The Patrician, to the point where many fans refuse to believe it's the same person as the Vetinari of later books
* [[Character Shilling]]: Twoflower loves going on about how great a wizard Rincewind is. [[Parodied Trope|Rincewind can't even spell the word correctly
* [[Cheap Gold Coins]]:
* [[Chekhov's Gun]]: The only spell Rincewind ever learned. {{spoiler|Subverted, since he doesn't get to use it, at least not in this book
** The story takes place on a flat world. As in there's an edge. No points figuring out what happens towards the end.
* [[Chest Monster]]: The Luggage, a walking chest made of sapient pearwood. One of the few good-guy examples... [[Heroic Comedic Sociopath|for a given value of "good"]].
* [[Con Man]]: Rincewind, technically speaking, who takes it upon himself to spin a few tales for Twoflower's benefit in exchange for gold. Unfortunately (for Rincewind) things don't work out as he hoped.
* [[Cosmic Chess Game]]: The gods of Discworld influence the events on the Disc by playing a game that involves rolling dice and moving pieces around a world map.
* [[Determinator]]: ''Nothing'' will stop the Luggage following Twoflower.
* [[Deus Ex Machina]]: A few of them, all [[Rule of Funny|played for laughs
* [[Did You Just Punch Out Cthulhu?]]: See [[Blinding Camera Flash]] above.
* [[Disproportionate Retribution]]: The dryad condemns Rincewind to death for accidentally peeling a strip of bark from her tree, and doesn't care that he was clinging to it to avoid a fatal fall
* [[Early Installment Weirdness]]: A LOT. Let's see
** Death acts psychotically, randomly killing people out of spite, unlike his later sympathetic view on humanity and seeing his role as a duty.
** The Patrician is flabby, capricious and eats rare delicacies. Despite [[Word of God]], many fans refuse to believe it's the same Patrician as the thin, coldly logical, ascetic Vetinari.
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* [[Eldritch Abomination]]: Bel-Shamharoth, the Sender of Eight, is a stock one.
* [[Empathic Weapon]]
* [[Everything's Better with Rainbows]]: The Rimbow, the great rainbow caused by the sunlight shining through the Rimfall as it pours from the Edge, which—due to the magical field—has ''eight'' colours: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, violet
* [[Exotic Entree]]: The Patrician enjoys delicacies like candied jellyfish.
* [[Fantastic Measurement System]]: Rincewind measures the Wyrmberg's magical field in (milli)Primes. In every other book, it's (milli)thaums. This was explained in the ''Discworld Companion'' as being two competing measurement systems, like Fahrenheit and Celsius.▼
* [[Fantasy Counterpart Culture]]: The Agatean Empire here seems mainly based on Japan (both the fact that it is closed to outsiders and has only one port, like Tokugawa-era Japan, and Twoflower's tourist stereotype seems mainly based on Japanese tourists). However, its naming conventions are based on Aztec names rendered literally into English.
* [[Fictional Colour]]: Octarine, the titular Colour of Magic. It's said to resemble a sort of disappointing fluorescent greenish-yellowish-purple.
▲* [[Fantastic Measurement System]]: Rincewind measures the Wyrmberg's magical field in (milli)Primes. In every other book it's (milli)thaums. This was explained in the Discworld Companion as being two competing measurement systems, like Fahrenheit and Celsius.
▲* [[Fictional Colour]]: Octarine, the titular Colour of Magic. It's said to resemble a sort of disappointing fluorescent greenish-yellowish-purple.
** This may be based on the colour of the afterimages one sees after looking into a bright light.
* [[Flat World]]: The introduction of the Discworld.
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* [[I Like Those Odds]]: Hrun the Barbarian declares he'll fight both dragonlords at once:
{{quote|'''Liartes''': That's pretty uneven odds, isn't it?
'''Hrun''': Yah. I outnumber you one to two.
* [[Inadequate Inheritor]]
* [[Incredibly Lame Pun]]: Noted in-universe when Rincewind has an inner monologue of exposition about Bel-Shamharoth and how wizards never say the number between seven and nine because "you'll be eight alive" as the saying goes
* [[It Runs on Nonsensoleum]]: An ocean-based hovercraft works by having hydrophobes, who don't hate but ''loathe'' water, stare at it and repel it with their loathing. They're very expensive, Rincewind says. Have to be trained on dehydrated water.
* [[King on His Deathbed]]: The ruler of the dragon riders gets poisoned by his daughter. However, since she is still in a power struggle with her two brothers, he refuses to pass on, lingering as a lich until he makes sure she is fit to rule on her own.
* [[Magical Land]]: The whole Disc to some extent, but some regions such as the area around the Wyrmberg are particularly magical. However, this is because they are suffering from the magical equivalent of nuclear fallout from a war at the dawn of time between the gods and the First Men.
* [[Magic Sword]]: Kring, Hrun's (and later Rincewind's) talking sword.
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* [[Ouroboros]]: Tethys once passed a world that was an equally common world myth as the turtle-elephant-disc structure, that of a world entwined by a serpent ouroboros.
* [[Powers That Be]]: One of only two Disc novels to mention the Old High Ones "to whom even the gods are answerable", who intervened to prevent the destruction of the Disc in the aforementioned war by banishing the gods to Cori Celesti and remaking men a good deal smaller.
* [[Retcon]]: Needless to say, as this is the first book, there are quite a few later on...
** One paragraph particularly stands out, when Rincewind is surprised that dryads still exist. His monologue mentions that it's thought that only trolls and elves survived the "coming of men to the Disc" and that gnomes and pixies have died out. Later books instead state that there are no elves on the Disc and gnomes and pixies are very much still there.
*** Considering how badly Rincewind did at University, he may simply have misremembered his history lessons. For that matter, the lessons themselves could've been wrong, given how many other things the UU wizards are clueless about.
** Hrun says that swamp dragons are extinct; they prominently appear in later books, like ''[[
*** Rincewind notes to himself that he's never seen Hrun outside of Ahnk-Morpork before, and when Hrun is out doing the heroing thing, he's very different from the drunken lout Rincewind has previously seen. It's quite possible that swamp dragons are extinct apart from being kept as pets, and he's never noticed them in cities because on arrival in any city, Hrun goes into the first tavern and drinks until he runs out of money or bartender's patience.
* [[Scenery Porn]]: The epic descriptions of Great A'tuin, the elephants and the Disc. This is often briefly recapped at the start of later novels, but ''The Colour of Magic'' has such descriptions throughout (particularly called-back at the end, where Tethys holds Rincewind over the Edge and he sees them for himself).
* [[Serial Prostheses]]: Goldeneyes Silverhand Dactylos. His backstory consists of him inventing marvels for various royals, only for his employers to mutilate him so that he couldn't repeat the invention for anyone else. When his latest employer asks why he didn't just give it all up and try flower arranging, he replies "I'm good at it
* [[Shout-Out]]: Besides the direct parodies noted above
** The place name "Ecalpon" ('noplace' spelled backwards) is a reference to Erewhon (''almost'' 'nowhere' backwards).
** The name Rincewind is derived from J. B. Morton's "Beachcomber" column in the London ''Daily Express''—specifically, it was the name of one of the dwarves in the "Mr Justice Cocklecarrot and the twelve Red-Bearded Dwarves" features.
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{{quote|'''Rincewind:''' Hrun, listen. If you add four to four, or take two from ten, you get a number. In here, whatever you do, don't say it, and we might get out of this alive.
'''Kring:''' Strange. Why can't he say eight?
''' ''[[Oh Crap|EIGHT, Hate, eight, eight, eight]]...'' '''
* [[Title Drop]]: "It was octarine, the colour of magic. It was alive and glowing and vibrant and it was the undisputed pigment of the imagination, because wherever it appeared it was a sign that mere matter was a servant of the powers of the magical mind. It was enchantment itself. But Rincewind always thought it looked a sort of greenish-purple."
* [[Wacky Wayside Tribe]]: The book is a constant stream of them.
* [[Weaksauce Weakness]]: [[Eldritch Abomination|Bel-Shamharoth]]. So ancient that most of his kind have gone extinct long ago, so repulsive that Time itself dares not touch his temple or its surroundings, and it's stated (though in jest) that Death might not have dared to touch him. So powerful that his existance is the reasons why wizards should not say the word eight, so alien that looking at him drives to insanity... {{spoiler|and [[Blinding Camera Flash|cripplingly weak to bright light]]
* [[Wide-Eyed Idealist]]: Twoflower.
* [[You All Meet in An Inn]]: Rincewind and Twoflower meet in the stereotypical fantasy inn the Broken Drum, which is also filled with heroes and adventurers. The name, incidentally, is explained in another Pratchett book
* [[Your Princess Is in Another Castle]]: Subverted, as the words "THE END" are followed ''immediately'' by a few more pages of story.
* [[You Said You Would Let Them Go|You Said You Would Let Me Go]]: This was the reward the High Priest of Krull promised his architect, a man so brilliant, he had already been mutilated by three previous employers so he could never surpass his work for them. Unfortunately for the architect, [[I Lied]].
{{reflist}}
{{Discworld novels}}
{{The Big Read}}
[[Category:Buddy Picture]]
▲[[Category:Discworld]]
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