Discworld Calendar Views

General Goods

The Discworld is the fictional setting for all of Terry Pratchett's Discworld fantasy novels. The Discworld calendar was first defined in a footnote in The Colour of Magic, and has been expanded upon in later novels and The Discworld Almanak (2004). It has numurous oddities, the chief of which is its length.

The calendar in general use in the Sto Plains and Ramtops ( Ankh-Morpork years ) uses the agricultural year, and counts from the founding of Unseen University. Years and centuries are also given names by the UU's astrologers. 2005 AM, for instance, is the Year of the Prawn, the fifth year of the Century of the Anchovy. The majority of the Discworld novels are set in the 20th century AM, the Century of the Fruitbat, with the later ones entering the 21st, the Century of the Anchovy.

There are two main calendars in use on Discworld. The Ankh-Morpork Calendar counts full years and starts at the founding of Ankh-Morpork, the University Calendar starts at the founding of Unseen University (in 1282 AM) and counts in half-years. Oddly enough, while the Imperial Ankh-Morpork calendar offers intellectual purity and mathematical elegance, the general populace tends to use the Weird, Wild, Wacky Wizards' calendar, which happens to correspond to the growing season.

The Annual Discworld Calendar is an inspired collection of paintings by award-winning illustrators who give us their own unique interpretations of Terry Pratchett's phenomal Discworld. Each full-page illustration also appears on the back; there are biographies of the artists as well as the author on the inside front page. The calendar dates are exhaustively researched and include major real-time calendrical data for the UK, Australia, New Zealand, Canada and the United States. It also includes notable Discworld dates like the Creator's Birthday, Samedi Nuite Morte, and the Uberwald League of Temperance Day (Remember: Not One Drop!). Artists briefed include Edward Miller, Les Edwards, Sandy Nightingale, Jackie Morris, David Frankland, David Wyatt, and, of course, Stephen Player and Paul Kidby, Terry Pratchett's favourite portrayers of the Discworld.