Good Omens: The Nice and Accurate Prophecy of Alice Nutter
“The whole of life is just like watching a film. Only it’s as though you always get in ten minutes after the big picture has started, and no one will tell you the plot, so you have to work it out all yourself from the clues.” — Terry Pratchett from Moving Pictures
Terry Pratchett, a giant in the world of fantasy fiction, passed away at the age of sixty-six on Thursday, March 12, 2015. Pratchett is the author of more than seventy books and is well known for writing The Discworld Series, a series of books about a flat world that lies on the backs of four elephants, which stand on top of a giant turtle. Pratchett is one of Britain’s most read authors, second only to J.K. Rowling. During his writing career, he’s created a vast array of colorful worlds.
My favorite book by Terry Pratchett is Good Omens: The Nice and Accurate Prophecy of Alice Nutter. He wrote the novel in collaboration with another acclaimed fantasy writer, Neil Gaiman. Good Omens is a story about the oncoming end of the world, brought on by the birth of the antichrist. However, this isn’t your typical apocalypse horror story. It makes one think of the 1976 horror film The Omen with a large dose of wacky, British humor.
Much of the story follows an angel, Aziraphale, and a demon, Crowley, as they team up to prevent the end of the world. Aziraphale, in addition to being a rare book collector, was once the guardian of the East gate of Eden. Crowley, a hip demon who constantly wears sunshades, was the serpent who tempted Eve. They decide to join forces because during the centuries that they’ve spent on the Earth, working, respectively, for the forces of good and evil, they’ve actually come to enjoy the company of humans and the lives they have on earth. Despite their differing backgrounds, they’ve become friends in the time they’ve spent on earth watching over and influencing the lives of humans. Crowley and Aziraphale are the quirkiest demon and angel you’ll have the pleasure of reading about. One of my favorite anecdotes from Good Omens is that whenever Crowley puts a new CD on in his Bentley, it turns into ‘The Best of Queen’ after a fortnight.
The antichrist is prophesied to be born to an American diplomat, but, due to a mix-up at the convent he is born at (which is run by the Chattering Order of St. Beryl, a satanic sisterhood), he is swapped at birth and ends up growing up as a relatively normal English boy in Lower Tadfield, Oxfordshire. Adam Young, the antichrist, is therefore completely unaware of his powers — which leads to him inadvertently raising the lost city of Atlantis from the depths of the sea and creating a shield around his hometown, which protects it from changing weather patterns (in Lower Tadfield, it’s always a pleasant seventy degrees). His powers even cause UFOs to land on earth, after he reads a magazine about conspiracy theories.
Pratchett and Gaiman’s book is chock-full of interesting supporting characters. There is a Witch Finder Army, a witch who is the last living descendant of Alice Nutter (the witch who wrote the prophecy about the rapture).Also, the Four Horsemen (Famine, War, Death, and Pollution [replacing Pestilence after the discovery of Penicillin]) appear in the guise of a biker gang.
Good Omens is sure to induce gut-wrenching laughter. The collaboration between Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman is perfection. It’s sad that the world has lost such a great talent in Terry Pratchett. As Neil Gaiman notes in the appended interview at the end of Good Omens,
Terry was a science fiction writer. It was the way his mind worked: the urge to take it all apart, and put it back together in different ways, to see how it all fit together — it’s not a ‘what if…’ or an ‘if only…’ or even an ‘if this goes on…’ it was the far more subtle and dangerous ‘If there was really a…, what would that mean? How would it work?’
It is this imaginative way of thinking that makes Good Omens, and all of his works, so magical. Terry Pratchett will truly be missed.
