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Good Omens
by:
Terry Pratchett
&
Neil Gaimen
1990 Workman Publishing, New York
Report by Duncan Brown
10/25/1993
Good Omens by Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaimen is about the end of the world,
well... the near end of the world. You see, the Anti-Christ and the
representatives of Heaven and Hell have decided that they like the planet and
they want it to be around for a while longer, this doesn't go along with the
grand scheme of things and confusion reigns supreme. The Anti-Christ is named
Adam, he is a rather ordinary child who is inspired and captivated by about
anything, for about 5 minuets. He is joined by Pepper a fiery red headed girl
around his own age, Brian and Wenslydale who basically follow anything that
Adam says with little or no argument, together they make up a gang that is
known as the Them. Newt Pulsifer is a man without direction so he decides to
join the witch finder group, Newt is the kind of man that cannot do too much
right in his life, he buys the kind of things that go obsolete within the week
that they are shipped in. Dog is the Hellhound that is supposed to look after
Adam for the rest of his life, but becomes more interested in hunting down
insects and other smaller creatures. The representatives are Aziphrale and
Crowley, Crowley is the representative of hell who likes the good things in
life like fast cars, VCRs and drinking bars, Aziphrale is the representative
of heaven and has the world's largest collection of rare books except for one,
Agnus Nutter's Nice and Accurate Prophecies, but we'll get into that later.
Anthema Device is Agnus Nutter's descendant who has the only remaining copy
of the book, but looses it. The Four Horsemen (actually it's three horsemen
and one horsewoman) DEATH, War, Famine, and Pestilence are doing exactly what
their names say. So much for the players, now for the game.
We start off the story with Crowley bringing Adam to the Chattering Order's
hospital in the middle of England for the switch of Adam and two other
innocents, they get mixed up at the "hospital". Adam, who is supposed to go
with a rich American who has some business in the British Isles but is sent
with Mr. and Ms Young. Azaphraile and Crowley are supposed to influence the
child. They find out 11 years later that they have been trying to influence
the wrong child by noticing that the Hell hound doesn't show up at the child's
party. The Hellhound finds Adam and his crew at a pit that has become their
main hangout spot and is magically changed to whatever Adam thinks that his
dog should look like, and then comes the time of truth, the naming of the
Hellhound. After a tense moment, Adam tells them exactly what he would name
it, and it was Dog. Now instead of being huge, gruesome, and mean, Dog is
small, furry, has a bent ear and is pretty much the cutest mutt that you
could ever see. Needless to say, Dog was disappointed but quickly adapted to
what he was now.
That evening, Azaphraile and Crowley are driving through the British
countryside without the use of headlights. Anthema Device is riding her bike
down the same road going in the opposite direction of,the Demon and Angel.
Bang. Anthema is thrown clear of the road with a fractured arm and a broken
bicycle. With a sweep of his hand, Azaphraile fixes the bike, mends her arm
and makes a bike rack with tartan straps, Anthema is too dazed to know what is
really going on, so in that state of confusion she forgets the book o'
prophicies prophecies that was given to her. After dropping her and her bike
off at her abode, Azaphrale discovers the book in the back of the car and
doesn't tell Crowley about his discovery.
Azaphrale spends about half of a day reading the book and mutters the
occasional "brilliant", but not much else. During the time that Azaphrale had
the book to read, Crowley was extraordinarily worried about what he was going
to do with his superiors because he had goofed with the babies. Another thing
that was going on was that Newt finally meets Anthema by getting into a car
crash because he swerved in order to miss a Tibetan that just happened to pop
up out of a tunnel that he was mysteriously teleported into by none other
than Adam. It's at this time that Adam starts thinking about what was in the
magazines that Anthema had loaned to him the previous day, stories about
saving the whales and protecting the ozone, but most importantly about the
lost continent of Atlantis and how it disappeared. Adam gets very fired up
about this one day and starts preaching about it, as he is doing so storm
clouds start to form and the Them realize that Adam is more than they
originally thought. It is at this time that Adam lets his imagination run
free and the world is a stranger place because of it. By the way, Atlantis
surfaces.
Now for the Four Horsepersons, they all meet at a small diner in the middle
of the English countryside. There is one difference between the Four that
are depicted in the bible and the ones that are in the book, these horsepeople
ride motorcycles, wear leather, and fly. Their names are War, Famine,
Pestilence and DEATH. In this diner they are joined by four other motorcycle
riders. The new four decide to give themselves names of new terrible things
of the modern day, like Really Obnoxious People. We'll join the 8 horsepeople
later, at the climax of the story.
Let's get back to Anthema and Newt, since this is the first time that Newt
has ever been in such close proximity to a woman and they weren't in an
argument nor was she a public servant, he was having thoughts about her that
were totally alien to him. Sexual thoughts. She was having quite similar
thoughts about him, but they went along the lines of "Well, he is the last person
that I will ever see again on the Earth, and he isn't all that bad looking..".
They were going over plans and the notecards that have been made up over the
years that served as a translation of what Agnus was trying to say, we are
told that Agnus's paranormal abilities were so specific and limited that they
were almost totally useless because you would only understand it after the
event had actually happened. It was like looking at a huge tapestry through
a paper towel tube, you can only see a small part of the whole picture, but
you could see alot of detail. Instead of standing around and procrastinate,
they decide to do something about the end of the world (which is about 4 hours
away).
Back to Adam and his crew, Adam knows that he has a job to do, but he has no
idea what it is. He leads the Them to a Nuclear Armory. They don't know it,
but they are being followed by Newt and Anthema. The 8 horsepeople are also
there, but they are about 30 minutes late for the big one. Adam's theory
about how to make the world right is to start it all over, and he decides to
do just that by setting off some nuclear weapons. Not good.
With very little time to spare, Newt and Anthema try frantically to destroy
the machine, but no matter what Newt does, the machinery seems to work. Maybe
even better than before. It is then that Anthema has a brainstorm, why not have
Newt try to fix the machine, he always has bad luck with whatever he does.
She instructs him to do so and in turn destroys the guidance systems of the
missiles. Now the four horsemen arrive in front of the military installation
(the other four couldn't fly, so they couldn't keep up with the others) and
have it out with the Them. War, Famine and Pestilence are defeated bye members
of the Them, but DEATH is left standing, DEATH is eternal. After the battle,
God and the Devil himself Appear in front of Adam and try to persuade him to
end it all, they are in for a surprise. Adam decides that the world is better
left alone than destroyed, and he's going to help it become a better place to
live in. Azaphrale and Crowley are quite happy with this decision because they
would be in big trouble with the big guys (God and the Devil) because of how
Armageddon was botched. Newt doesn't get the girl, but that isn't a surprise,
he has no luck with anything anyway. DEATH goes on doing exactly what he
always does. Everybody lives happily ever after, except Newt who gets
absolutely nothing, save the memories.
The conflict in this story is man against nature, or more appropriately, man against the supernatural.
In my opinion, this was a very good book throughout, but it didn't live up to the claims on the cover of being a direct ancestor of the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. All it had in common with it was that they were both written by and English author(s). One problem with this book was that it seemed to be censored at parts where it may have had strong language, this was done by summarizing the paragraph in one or two sentences. I give it a B.