People look down on stuff like geography and meteorology, and not only because they're standing on one and being soaked by the other. They don't look quite like real science. But geography is only physics slowed down and with a few trees stuck on it, and meteorology is full of excitingly fashionable chaos and complexity. And summer isn't a time. It's a place as well. Summer is a moving creature and likes to go south for the winter.

The calendar of the Theocracy of Muntab counts down, not up. No-one knows why, but it might not be a good idea to hang around and find out.

Most of my schooldays were the worst day of my life.

I'm glad a genre writer has got a knighthood, but stunned that it was me.

The figures looked more or less human. And they were engaged in religion. You could tell by the knives (it's not murder if you do it for a god).

There are hardly any excesses of the most crazed psychopath that cannot easily be duplicated by a normal kindly family man who just comes in to work every day and has a job to do.

You'll see! We're going to the palace. Fetch Angua. We might need her. And bring the search warrant. You mean the sledgehammer, sir? Yes.