Judgment Day

Science of Discworld IV: A Novel

By: Terry Pratchett, Ian Stewart, Jack Cohen

Narrated by: Michael Fenton Stevens, Stephen Briggs

Length: 12 hrs and 17 mins

Publisher's summary

The fourth book in the Science of Discworld series, and this time around dealing with THE REALLY BIG QUESTIONS, Terry Pratchett's brilliant new Discworld story Judgment Day is annotated with very big footnotes (the interleaving chapters) by mathematician Ian Stewart and biologist Jack Cohen, to bring you a mind-mangling combination of fiction, cutting-edge science, and philosophy.

Marjorie Dawe is a librarian and takes her job - and indeed the truth of words - very seriously. She doesn't know it, but her world and ours - Roundworld - is in big trouble. On Discworld, a colossal row is brewing. The Wizards of the Unseen University feel responsible for Roundworld (as one would for a pet gerbil). After all, they brought it into existence by bungling an experiment in Quantum ThaumoDynamics. But legal action is being brought against them by Omnians, who say that the Wizards' godlike actions make a mockery of their noble religion. As the finest legal brains in Discworld (a zombie and a priest) gird their loins to do battle - and when the Great Big Thing in the High Energy Magic Laboratory is switched on - Marjorie Dawe finds herself thrown across the multiverse and right in the middle of the whole explosive affair.

As God, the Universe, and, frankly, Everything Else is investigated by the trio, you can expect world-bearing elephants, quantum gravity in the Escher-verse, evolutionary design, eternal inflation, dark matter, disbelief systems - and an in-depth study of how to invent a better mousetrap.

©2015 Terry Pratchett (P)2015 Random House Audio

Critic reviews

"Stewart, Cohen and Pratchett set out to puzzle us and make us think differently.... This is exhilarating." (A. S. Byatt, New Statesman)

“Fascinating and entertaining.... It’s baffling why this appealingly distinctive offshoot of the wildly popular Discworld yarns took so long to cross the Atlantic.” (Kirkus Reviews)

very entertaining and thought provoking.

Heard the four chapters of the science of Disc World. All very much worth listening.

If you get it, you get it.

This is the second time I’ve listened to the entire science of Discworld series.
Judgment day is by far the densest of the books. It has a serious point to make and it makes it well.

I consider the 4 books as a single Terry Pratchett story.

An excellent science and fun combination

This is a wonderful book. The science side is deep, lucid and well explained. The Discworld part is as fun as they come! The two story lines interweave and combine in a very compelling fashion.

There is nothing wrong with being an Atheist

It is a nice book about belief and what it means for different kinds of people.

It's a science book. Don't expect miracles.

Unlike other reviewers, this reader doesn't look to science books to reinforce the desert fables I was taught as a child. Like the other books in this series, this is a tongue in cheek exploration of science, the history of science, and why science is not magic. Delightful and informative.

Not as good as the prior ones.

Science lectures just rehashed prior topics, didn't really give us anything new. It felt like there was less Discworld, too -- even the introduction of a new character felt more like a tease than a story. As much as I love this series, I would recommend just skipping this one.

Amazing, brilliantly insightful and informative!

Loved it! Great read. Extremely thought provoking, funny, insightful, fun, silly, serious, entertaining and educational!

This contains the last discworld I can find to read

So every other chapter is on discworld, with the wizards, Lord V and others. The science is great, don’t get me wrong, but hearing Pratchett’s marvelous voice one last time leaves me with one last word: Ook!

Good but dense

The discWorld side story is fun and relevant as usual. The science is at times very dense but also very solid. Tougher to grasp and retain in audio.

Overall very good.

Ironic

Ironically this book isn’t much different than books written by Christians Jews and Muslims on why their religion is right.
Go I expecting a lot of information that is disjointed and not put in its full context creating an argument a priest could knock over in a few steps.