Mort had never heard the phrase “Pre-Raphaelite”, which was a pity because it would have been almost the right description. So let’s just say that Ankh-Morpork is as full of life as an old cheese on a hot day, as loud as a curse in a cathedral, as bright as an oil slick, as colourful as a bruise and as full of activity, industry, bustle and sheer exuberant busyness as a dead dog on a termite mound. Perhaps it’s the sheer zestful vitality of the place, or maybe it’s just that a city with a million inhabitants and no sewers is rather robust for poets, who prefer daffodils and no wonder. Poets have tried to describe Ankh-Morpork. His ambitious plans to use his discovery to send messages, involving the careful torturing of a small king in order to modulate the signal, were never fully expounded because, at that point, the bar closed. Presumably, he said, there must be some elementary particles - kingons, or possibly queons - that do this job, but of course succession sometimes fails if, in mid-flight, they strike an anti-particle, or republicon. He reasoned like this: you can’t have more than one king, and tradition demands that there is no gap between kings, so when a king dies the succession must therefore pass to the heir instantaneously. The only things known to go faster than ordinary light is monarchy, according to the philosopher Ly Tin Weedle. AFTER ALL, IT’D BE A BLOODY STUPID WORLD IF PEOPLE GOT KILLED WITHOUT DYING, WOULDN’T IT? (M) PEOPLE GET KILLED, BUT THAT’S THEIR BUSINESS. ‘You go around killing people!’ I? KILL? said Death, obviously offended. Tragic heroes always moan when the gods take an interest in them, but it’s the people the gods ignore who get the really tough deals. The Creator had a lot of remarkably good ideas when he put the world together, but making it understandable hadn’t been one of them. Which was going to be hard, because there wasn’t one. He was determined to discover the underlying logic behind the universe.

Mort was one of those people who are more dangerous than a bag of rattlesnakes. It wasn’t that he was unhelpful, but he had the kind of vague, cheerful helpfulness that serious men soon learn to dread. It was also acutely embarrassing to Mort’s family that the youngest son was not at all serious and had about the same talent for horticulture that you would find in a dead starfish.

Mort by Terry Pratchett