The Dark Side of the Sun - Books (Terry Pratchett, Paperback)

For full product details, view this product on Amazon.

Customer Reviews of The Dark Side of the Sun

Loque
South Shields, UK
29th November 2007

Agony
Reading this really was agonising.

I am a huge fan of Terry Pratchett, and all of his work, but reading this simply did not agree with me at all. The story is all over the place, and the language and dialogue is very jittery, and not in a good way.

I also found the ending very bizarre and ultimately lacking, given the upstream struggle I had to endure to get there.

Avid Pratchett fans should read it anyway, casual readers should definately not. If anything it is interesting to read a young Terry Pratchett stuttering and blethering his way into the world...

Semioticghost
London, UK
3rd March 2006

funky and furiously original
This Terry Pratchet novel is a hilarious, coming-of-age romp through a funky and furiously original galaxy populated by 52 intelligent races and beings with endearing quirks. Some of these beings are luckier than others and our hero, Dom Savalos, is one of them. On the eve of his ascension to the chairmanship of his planet, he finds out about something that has preoccupied some of he best minds around - the science of probability maths, which predicts both likely and seemingly inevitable outcomes of individual lives. Dom find himself in the position of being predestined to find the world on which the enigmatic jokers reside - a prehistoric, highly evolved race thought by many to be responsible for most of the other intelligent life in the galaxy. But the story only starts here...

Stephen A. Haines
Ottawa, Ontario Canada
5th May 2005

The endless question
Young Dom Sabalos is about to become Chairman of an entire planet. That means giving up countless adolescent pleasures. He won't be able to make exploratory journeys into the marshes or ponder the mysteries of the Joker Towers. Of Old Earth ancestry, Dom's home is Widdershins, a planet producing a special pharmaceutical - pilac. The demand for this drug has made the Sabalos family powerful and rich beyond calculation. It says much that Dom's godfather is a bank. IS a bank - one that takes up an entire planet.

Being rich and powerful evokes enemies, even when your wealth is gratefully contributed to by all who take pilac. Which is nearly all sentient creatures. There are other species scattered about the universe, but they all appear to be approximately the same duration - four or five million years. Before that, there seem to have been The Jokers. As Dom flees Widdershins to thwart assassination, he seeks answers to the Joker mystery. The quest leads to endless adventures and opens many questions in the reader's mind. The main one being: "Who are we, and where did we come from?"

In today's world, "Dark Side" can occupy only a special niche. Older - sorry! "established" - Pratchett readers may look upon this book as an historical curiosity. The really established SF reader will see the obvious reliance on Isaac Asimov's "Robot" series. In "Dark Side", the very intelligent robot is named "Isaac". Douglas Adams' "probability math" is given place and complex problems are solved by a team of a poet and a "mad computer". The book's themes and characters are very "1970s SciFi". Yet the sparks of the later Discworld books shine brightly here. Beyond the carryovers of such ideas as Hogswatch Night, Small Gods and Widdershins itself, there are the usual touches of Pratchettean irony and insight. There is also the underlying foundation of Pratchett's capacity for bringing remote facts and ideas into his stories. There are Gypsy terms, ancient Philistine goddesses and touches of Classical Greek theatre.

These literary arabesques are what makes Pratchett a repeatable read, no matter what genre critics try to cram him into. Although nearly thirty years have passed since this was written, it remains worthy of a place on your bookshelf. [stephen a. haines - Ottawa, Canada]

dogbarkssome
England
15th July 2004

Pratchett does SF
Before the success of the Discoworld novels, Terry Pratchett tried his hands at a couple of science fiction novels. His first, 1976's The Darks Side of the Sun, deals with the oft-tackled idea of a creator race, one (here called the Jokers) which shaped the universe and its inhabitants but have since disappeared.

The novel serves as a travelogue through Pratchett's future universe, and with its cast of well-developed aliens and locations this is a rich journey. Probability maths, quantum physics and evolution are dealt with in a light and readable manner with a small but well drawn cast. The novel isn't laugh out loud funny, but there are elements of Pratchett's trademark humour.

A short but successful piece of sf universe building, recommended even for those who may not enjoy the authors comedic fantasy output. After re-reading this the real mystery is not the whereabouts of the Jokers, but why with his prolific and relentless Discworld output Terry Pratchett has never found either the time or the inclination to produce another science fiction novel - on the evidence of this he certainly has the talent.

Robert Holm
at home behind my keyboard
4th October 2003

Sci-fi Pratchett
What do you get when you combine Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Dune, and the Foundation trilogy? The answer is an interesting book by Terry Pratchett, entitled The Dark Side of the Sun. It was written in 1976, long before the first Discworld novels. On occasion it is evident that this was an early effort by Pratchett - it's not as funny or thoughtful as any of his later works, and it's very brief and hurried in places. But there's a lot of interesting ideas and concepts, show-casing the inventive mind of Pratchett in his early days. There are a number of ideas here (mostly just names) that will later turn up in the Discworld novels (for example, Hogswatchnight, Small Gods, etc.).
The story is about Dom Salabos, a member of the wealthy Salabos family in charge of the world of Widdershins. Dom should have the perfect life, but there is one problem: he keeps getting assassinated all the time. The story revolves around the concept of probability math, with Dom setting off on a quest to find the mysterious Jokers World, accompanied by his robot Isaac and his alien mentor Hrsh-Hgn. One thing to note is that there is no heroine or "love interest" in this book, refreshingly enough. However, just before the ending, it's as if Pratchett has noticed this short-coming, and a "female lead" type of character is introduced. The ensuing scenes jars violently with the preceding story, both in style and content, and it's as if you suddenly find yourself reading an entirely different story. The ending itself is very abrupt and hurried, and not very satisfying.
This book does show that Pratchett could be one of the sci-fi greats if he wanted to. However, much more could have been made with the universe and the ideas Pratchett developed in Dark Side, and it's to be hoped that he will return to the realm of sci-fi some day. Recommended for fans of Pratchett (and of sci-fi in general).