Terry Pratchetts Going Postal, Band 29 in der Reihe, ist dazu noch etwas besonderes - ähnlich wie bei The Truth geht es prinzipiell um die Macht der Worte und schon deshalb macht der Band bei mir mittlerweile The Truth seinen ersten Platz in meinen persönlichen Top Five der Diskworld-Lieblingsbände streitig. Und das bei weitem nicht nur wegen der absolut genialen Namen der Hauptpersonen Moist von Lipwig und Adora Belle Dearheart. Wie die wohl übersetzt werden sollen? Ich hoffe ja sehr, daß der arme Mensch, der den Übersetzerjob kriegt, wenigstens daran denkt, daß der Papageienspruch "Pieces of Eight" aus Stevensons "Schatzinsel" ist und in der deutschen Fassung als "Goldene Escudos" übersetzt wurde. Aber wenn nicht, wird die Welt davon nicht untergehen. Und die Diskworld erst recht nicht.

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'How can I put this...' mused Pelc. 'Words have power, you understand? It is in the nature of our universe. Our Library itself distorts time and space on quite a grand scale. Well, when the Post Office started accumulating letters it was storing words. In fact what was being created was what we call a gevaisa, a tomb of living words. Are you of a literary persuasion, Mr Lipwig?'
'Not as such.' Books were a closed book to Moist.
'Would you burn a book?' said Pelc. 'An old book, say, battered, almost spineless, found in a box of rubbish?'
'Well... probably not', Moist admitted.
'Why not? Would the thought make you uncomfortable?'
'Yes, I suppose it would. Books are... well, you just don't do that.

(Terry Pratchett, "Going Postal", 2004)

Trying to reach out from the place where he was headed, where he had lived most of his life, the strange city of dream-makers, of poverty and test screenings and murder and money - to other places, other nights, other hunting grounds. To other cities, other machines, forests of buildings and rivers of concrete where other men and women missed the stars at night and tended small plants on window sills and kept tiny dogs to take for walks along corridors in the endless procession of boxes and intersections and lights; where they rented space in other people's property so they had somewhere to sleep so they could get up and perform profit-related tasks they neither understood nor cared about, simply so they would be given the tokens of exchange they needed in order to rent the space in which they slept and snarled and watched television until finally some of them slipped out of their windows and ran howling down the dark streets, throwing off a numbness handed down from a society that was itself trapped in fracture and betrayal and despair; the lonely insane in a culture turning into a Christmas bauble, gaudy beauty wrapped around an emptiness which was coalescing faster and faster into parking lots and malls and waiting areas and virtual chatrooms - non-places where nobody knew anything about anybody any more.

Abruptly the whirling stopped.

Und ich merke jetzt erst beim abschreiben, daß der ganze Absatz aus nur drei Sätzen besteht ...

Wow, Mr Brust, hoffentlich gibt es bald mehr Bücher dieser Sorte - nach dem neuen Vlad-Taltos-Band ...