REVIEW: THE MOIST VON LIPWIG TRILOGY

He's Mr. Mail. Mr. Money. Mr. Railway.
Yet at heart a confidence trickster who surprisingly proves himself as the ultimate bureaucrat.
He has many names -Albert, Mr. Mail, Mr. Money, Mr. Railway...-, as a trick of the trade, but there is no mistake that all of these aliases lead to the one and only



MOIST VON LIPWIG
(HÚMEDO VON MUSTACHEN in the Spanish translation)

The Moist-von-Lipwig steampunk trilogy is an excellent gateway into the Discworld, with the three-part saga's lovable scoundrel antihero and its central theme of change and technological/social progress in a renaissance fantasy world on the verge of eighteenth-century Enlightenment.

*

Going Postal - Cartas en el asunto

Postal is the only Moist novel that has been adapted to the screen so far (still waiting for the Money and Steam miniseries!). It is also Terry Pratchett's open love letter to snail mail - criticizing how it's being currently replaced by other, more advanced and quicker interpersonal communication systems -.



Self-made man, raised from obscure orphanhood to the infamy of the all-star psycho confidence trickster, Moist von Lipwig never expected to get a new lease on life on the day of execution - neither for this second chance to be in general charge of the Royal Mail. Alas, that's how things are (nice winged shako hat and matching winged sneakers, Hermes-style, also forming part of the uniform indeed!). There is also a romantic subplot of von Lipwig's betrothal with Adora Belle Dearheart, a free-spirited heiress turned social justice warrior and Ada Lovelace counterpart (think Ada Goth all grown up!) whose family has fallen on hard times due to the rise of clacks (semaphore towers, a metaphor for information technology) as the dominant medium for interpersonal communication. Knowing Moist, knowing Adora, there is both a quid pro quo and a love story in this arrangement...



In this story, an affectionate parody and subversion of Atlas Shrugged, of course information technology gets its fair share of satirising - Pratchett's idea is not going full-scale Luddism about snail mail, but showing how it can coexist with IT (the "clacks" semaphore tower system in the Discworld) at the end of the day. Hackers and free software ("the smoking GNU"), not to mention the Three Laws of Robotics, get here as much of a typically British tongue-in-cheek treatment as the mafia, capitalist monopolies, and even philatelia, the age-old hobby of stamp collecting: one of the few factors that currently keep snail mail alive.



**

Making Money - Dinero a mansalva

Right when Moist, in spite of his new lease on life, was growing weary of a cushy post as Mr. Mail, he is offered the deputy direction of the Royal Mint and First Bank on top of that - and it becomes his quest to introduce the reluctant Morporkian populace to paper money. The pug? Wealthy matriarch Topsy Lavish, Moist's predecessor, has bequeathed her immense fortune and office to her pet Mr. Fusspot, whom Moist adopts and becomes deputy for.

  



Of course the Lavish siblings, snubbed by their late mother in favour of a literal lapdog and his upstart nouveau-riche deputy, are not going to back down that easily. The Lavishes are a discworld counterpart to the Medicis and Borgias (their surname even echoes both luxury and Lannisters!), to give you an idea of what Mr. Money is up against...
He also gets a relationship upgrade with fiancée Adora on the love front... no spoiler alert, but I will let you figure out yourself what happens to them as a straight OTP!

At the end of Money, Moist and Adora... are husband and wife!




***

Raising Steam - A todo Vapor

All good things come in threes, and in Terry Pratchett's swan song, he finally gives Moist von Lipwig the chance to wear the third of three hats for his administrative hat-trick: Mr. Mail, who is also Mr. Money, becomes Mr. Railway on top of those two titles - in what is an open letter to the Victorian steam fever.
For starters, the final installment presents some interesting character dynamics by giving Moist a kouhai: Dick Simnel ("Lemnis" in sdrawckab, to echo Hephaestus) a self-taught young provincial metalworking prodigy with a great ambition - namely, this lad from oop north has made the first locomotive, and is the first train driver, in the history of the Discworld! In fact, I came for Mr. Railway, who negotiates land rights to lay out the railway tracks, and stayed for the self-taught young man with the flat cap who made and now drives the Iron Girder, which he refers to as a "she" and regards as the apple of his eye. Maybe having a soft spot for steampunk, a train driver for a great-grandfather, and being self-taught myself played all a part in this favouritism!

Whereas the first few books were essentially powered by the lampooning of epic fantasy tropes, which produced a new kind of magic unique to Pratchett’s work, the Discworld has changed. A medieval world has morphed into what’s essentially a 19th century society, albeit one where humans co-exist with such people – and they’re presented as fully rounded people, it’s important to note – as trolls, dwarves, golems, and now even geeky goblins.

 

Raising Steam marks a completion, of sorts, of this process, because such a world can’t rely on the magic of the Middle Ages and Early Modern era for its forward momentum. No, it needs a new power source: coal-fired steam. Step forward Dick Simnel. It would be easy to mistake Simnel for a straightforward, even simple country lad, but that’s to overlook the fact that he’s an engineer. And not just a glorified blacksmith, but someone who’s learnt the mysteries of the sliding rule, an innovator, a lad with a shed who knows how to use it.
Through careful experimentation and occasionally blowing stuff up on a more-or-less controlled basis, Simnel has tamed the steam, harnessing the power of all four classical elements in order to make the first train in the Discworld move forwards on the tracks. When the higher-ups like von Lipwig see Simnel's locomotive, the Iron Girder, they also see the future. What follows is Pratchett’s take on the railway fever that gripped Victorian Britain at the excitable zenith of industrialisation.

As the tracks are laid and rights to the lands are acquired, the task proves not easy for our senpai-kouhai duo (later turned a trio with the addition of a curious hobgoblin), due mainly to railway terrorism by Luddites/ISIS counterparts who are fanatically opposed to industrial progress on what they deem religious grounds. The railway, which brings people together, opens up possibilities and certainly helps, but it’s also a potent symbol of change for those who don’t want change thank you very much. And at the extreme end of those who don’t want change lie the fundamentalists, the violent naysayers, the people who prefer to blow stuff up on a more-or-less uncontrolled basis.
How to counter such a mindset is the overarching preoccupation of the second half of the novel, as Moist and Simnel build a railway all the way from their Morporkian-Sto Plains homelands to Überwald. Why? Without giving too much away, it’s because certain dwarves can’t accept being at peace with traditional enemies. The same fanatical dwarves who want to stop the Iron Girder in its tracks, to be more exact... The internecine conflicts amongst the dwarves soon spill out beyond their mines, and this eventually draws Moist, Simnel, and the railway right into the middle of an attempted coup d’état. Will they reach their final station unscathed?
This second act, with colonialists laying railway tracks across hostile "savage" territory and all the consequences thereof, was reminiscent of, and even surpassing, The Lunatic Express -even the climax involves a railway bridge across a chasm, though with far more dangerous enemies than African Lions to confront!-. There is a traintop battle, railway accidents, a fat controller, and landowners intent to make Moist drunk in order to stop the tracks from coursing right across their estates - a wild ride indeed...