Boing Boing

An evening of confusion with Dell customer service

Lisa Katayama — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 05:29:10 PST

I got my Dell Mini10V in the mail yesterday. It's small and red and pretty, but I had one minor issue with my order. When I was personalizing my order online, it asked me if I wanted a 24WHr 3-cell battery or a 56WhHr 6-cell battery; the 6-cell was just $35 more, but had double the lifespan. I went with the 6-cell. As soon as I pulled it out of the box, though, I realized it was way too big to fit into my favorite bag. It was my fault; I had ordered the wrong thing. I called Dell's 1-800 number to see if they could process an exchange; it was the beginning of what turned out to be a baffling journey into the labyrinth of Dell's customer service phone line. After a few minutes of hold music, I got through to a woman who told me I could return the 6-cell, get a refund, and then purchase the 3-cell separately. I wanted to ask her how much the refund would be for, but after telling me she'd email me a UPS label, she hastily thanked me for choosing Dell and then put me on hold so I could speak to a sales rep who would then sell me the 3-cell battery. The sales rep was a soft-spoken woman named Jame. After asking me about three minutes of questions about what kind of laptop I had purchased and how, she told me I could buy a 3-cell battery for my Mini 10V for $129.99 + tax, how would I like to pay? Before I paid, I wanted to know how much I was going to get refunded for the 6-cell. She said it would be around $135, but she seemed unsure. I asked her to put me back on the phone with the person whom I had talked to about the refund so I could double check. She refused. "I'd really like to sell you this battery first," she said. I explained that I didn't want to pay $129.99+ for an extra battery for a $299 computer without knowing how much I'll get refunded for the one I was returning. She kept asking me why I wasn't buying the battery from her, and I repeatedly told her that it was because I wanted to confirm the return amount, and besides, I can buy it on Dell.com for the same price, free shipping, without spelling out my name, address, and credit card number over and over. Finally, she said: "Ma'am, I didn't want it to come to this, but I'll tell you this, I want to make this sale. If you don't buy the battery, I won't get my commission."

"I understand," I said, politely at first. "But I really don't want to spend that much money without knowing how much I'll be refunded."

"I told you, you'll get about $135."

"Can you please just put me through to the returns person?"

"But then I won't get my commission," she said, refusing to hang up.

"That's really not my problem. Can you please just do your job and put me through to the returns department?"

"I am doing my job. My job is to sell you this battery."

"I'm not going to buy it now. Since you can't answer my question about the refund, I need to talk to the person I was talking to right before you, who might be able to."

"Then is it okay if I call you in 15 minutes to sell you this battery again?"

"Ok, fine, call me back later," I said.

The hold music again. A few minutes later, someone picked up, thanked me for calling Dell, and asked me for some information so that he could connect me to the right person. Two people later, I finally got an answer — I would get $35 for returning the 6-cell battery that retails for $149.99.

"But someone just tried to sell me the 3-cell for $129 and told me I'd get $135 back for the 6-cell," I said. This woman had no idea what I was talking about, so she put me back on hold.

To be fair, I rarely have a good experience calling toll-free customer service numbers for any company. But in the hour and a half that I spent on the phone with Dell, I spoke to about ten different people, listened to an hour of hold music, repeated my customer number, my order number, my address, my return authorization number, my purchase ID number, my phone number, and my computer's service tag number at least two dozen times total, and spelled out my name another dozen times. I got blackmailed into staying the phone with one person eager to make a sale and was commanded to get off of my headset (I'm not kidding — one guy literally yelled at me to get off my headset because he couldn't hear me) by another. At the end of the day, I was left with no idea whether I could exchange my 6-cell for a 3-cell and a conviction that these Dell customer service reps must be unhappy, untrained, underpaid, or all of the above. (I should also point out that I probably never would have encountered this giant battery issue in the first place if the Dell web site made it clear how big and how heavy the 6-cell would be — I mean, I knew it would stick out, but there was no image or metric given to gauge how much with.)

I talked to a Dell spokesperson this morning, who explained to me that the battery can't be broken out of the system and returned or exchanged separately.* "It's part of the components in the system, like the processor, the memory, and the OS; once you receive your system, you can't pull those parts out. Your options are to return the whole thing or to buy a new battery."

But of course! This made perfect sense. What didn't make sense was the wild goose chase that customer service sent me on last night.

*She also said they would use this incident as an opportunity to retrain their service reps, and that it has never been their intention to mislead their customers.

Photos: Disaster Area (Thumbnail) and Ndevil (Mini 10 battery)

Makers Canadian launch in Toronto tonight!

Cory Doctorow — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 02:23:20 PST

Tonight, I'm launching my latest novel, Makers in Canada, at the excellent Toronto sf reference library, the Merril Collection, at 239 College St. (3rd floor), east of Spadina. The event starts at 7PM, and I'll be doing a reading, taking questions, and signing books.

Books are being sold by Bakka Phoenix, and if you can't make it tonight, they're happy to take your pre-orders for signed, personalized copies -- I'll sign them tonight and they'll ship them out right away. They're at +1 416 963 9993 or inquiries@ bakkaphoenixbooks. com.

Hope to see you there!

US-Canada Tour

MPAA shuts down entire town's muni WiFi over a single download

Cory Doctorow — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 02:09:22 PST

The MPAA has successfully shut down an entire town's municipal WiFi because a single user was found to be downloading a copyrighted movie. Rather than being embarrassed by this gross example of collective punishment (a practice outlawed in the Geneva conventions) against Coshocton, OH, the MPAA's spokeslizard took the opportunity to cry poor (even though the studios are bringing in record box-office and aftermarket receipts).

Mike LaVigne, IT director, said the number of people who access the Internet using the connection varies widely, from perhaps a dozen people a day to 100 during busy times such as First Fridays and the Coshocton Canal Festival.
It's used by Coshocton County Sheriff's deputies who can park in the 300 block and complete a traffic or incident report without leaving their vehicle. Out-of-town business people can park and use their laptops to make connections.
During festival times, vendors find it a convenience to check the status of credit cards being used to make purchases, LaVigne said.
Because it's a single address used by many people, it's difficult to tell who made the illegal download, although the county plans to investigate the matter .

Illegal movie download forces shutdown of free Wi-Fi (Thanks, Dan!)

Venn diagram tee shows the bittersweet between happy and sad

Cory Doctorow — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 02:04:57 PST

Diesel Sweeties' R. Stevens and Ariana Osborne are offering this wordy Venn diagram shirt showing the bittersweet territory between happiness and sadness for $18-19, and taking pre-orders now.

(Happy()Sad) Diagram Shirt (via Warren Ellis)

Previously:

Apocalyptic art-photography from Stefano Bonazzi

Cory Doctorow — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 02:00:48 PST

Stefano Bonazzi's "Last Day on Earth" series of photographs are stellar apocalyptic dreams of stark landscapes and weirdly armored figures.

The last day on earth (via JWZ)

8-way video card

Cory Doctorow — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 01:58:33 PST

It's gadgets like this Matrox 8-way video card -- which lets you drive eight 2560 x 1600 displays at once -- that make me think seriously about going back to a desktop machine and abandoning laptops. If only I could find 1) room for eight displays and 2) a graceful way of using the home partition on my laptop as my desktop's home partition as well, without sacrificing speed (NFS), or having to reboot each time I sit down.

The Matrox M9188 PCIe x16 multi-display Octal graphics card addresses the need to visualize large amounts of data at once in order to effectively make decisions. The latest offering from the M-Series family is the world's first single-slot PCIe x16 octal card, featuring the ability to support both DisplayPort and DVI Single-Link outputs to ensure wide compatibility with today's monitors. With 2 GB of memory and advanced desktop management features, such as independent or stretched desktop modes, the M9188 drives energy, transportation, process control, financial trading, and other mission-critical environments with extraordinary performance.

Matrox M9188 PCIe x16 (via Red Ferret)

Bioshock Hypo replicas

Cory Doctorow — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 01:53:51 PST

As Alice at Wonderlandblog points out, it's rare to see official merch as good as these Bioshock 2 EVE Hypos -- you usually have to find some fetishistic fan art. But this is an actual in-store tchotchke, and it's a corker.

(via Wonderland)

Kim Stanley Robinson's alternate time-travel life of Galileo, GALILEO'S DREAM

Cory Doctorow — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 02:19:18 PST

Here's the Guardian's Alison Flood's detailed look at Kim Stanley Robinson's latest novel, Galileo's Dream, a fictionalized biography of Galileo that features time-travel.

What he came up with was three different temporal dimensions - the first moving very fast, at the speed of light, the second very slow and "vibrating slowly back and forth, as if the universe itself were a single string or bubble", the third - antichronos - in reverse. We experience them as one, creating a three-way interference pattern, which accounts for sensations such as foresight, déjà vu, nostalgia and precognition. The compound nature of time, Robinson writes, "creates our perception of both transience and permanence, of being and becoming". He's shown the novel to people who are "much more serious about the time travel stuff" and they're "having a blast". "They immediately map my three strands of time onto their system. They think I've partially discovered the real thing," he says gleefully...
So Galileo makes his telescope. He sees the Seven Sisters constellation, surrounded by "thickets of lesser stars, granulated almost to white dust in places ... No one else in the history of the world had ever seen these stars, until this very night, this very moment". He discovers Jupiter's four moons. He studies acceleration and motion. He observes sunspots. He frequently, frequently rings "like a struck bell" as his genius strikes: "Here it was, the truth of the situation - the cosmos revealed in a single stroke as being one way rather than another. The Earth was spinning under his feet, also rolling around the sun ... Again he rang like a bell. His flesh buzzed like struck bronze, his hair stood on end. How things worked; it had to be; and he rang." He stamps on the ground after he is tried by the Inquisition for supporting Copernicanism: "'It still moves!' he said. 'Eppur si muove!'"

Kim Stanley Robinson: science fiction's realist (Thanks, Robert!)

Previously:

HOWTO kill wiretaps when making a phone call

Cory Doctorow — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 01:43:09 PST

CALEA is the terrible US federal law that requires that all switches that carry voice-traffic be built with an easy-to-access remote wiretapping capability so that cops (or bad guys who know cop secrets) can listen in on your voice conversations without cooperation from the phone company. A team of University of Pennsylvania researchers (already notorious for finding flaws in the previous version of the CALEA standard that let callers lock out wiretaps) have found a solid theoretical attack against the newer, shinier CALEA standard.

"We asked ourselves the question of whether this standard is sufficient to have reliable wiretapping," said Micah Sherr, a post-doctoral researcher at the university and one of the paper's co-authors. Eventually they were able to develop some proof-of-concept attacks that would disrupt devices. According to Sherr, the standard "really didn't consider the case of a wiretap subject who is trying to thwart or confuse the wiretap itself."
It turns out that the standard sets aside very little bandwidth -- 64K bits per second -- for keeping track of information about phone calls being made on the tapped line. When a wire tap is on, the switch is supposed to set up a 64Kbps Call Data Channel to send this information between the telco and the law enforcement agency doing the wiretap. Normally this channel has more than enough bandwidth for the whole system to work, but if someone tries to flood it with information by making dozens of SMS messages or VoIP (voice over Internet protocol) phone calls simultaneously, the channel could be overwhelmed and simply drop network traffic.
That means that law enforcement could lose records of who was called and when, and possibly miss entire call recordings as well, Sherr said.

How to Deny Service to a Federal Wiretap (Thanks, Adam!)

Previously:

Oil running out faster than the International Energy Agency admits, says whistleblower

Mark Frauenfelder — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 20:11:31 PST

Guardian: "The world is much closer to running out of oil than official estimates admit, according to a whistleblower at the International Energy Agency who claims it has been deliberately underplaying a looming shortage for fear of triggering panic buying."

Jeff VanderMeer and SG Browne in San Francisco, Nov 14

Cory Doctorow — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 17:41:23 PST

The last of this year's excellent "SF in SF" reading series is coming up on Nov 14, at 7PM:

Jeff VanderMeer, recent Guest of Honor at the World Fantasy Convention 2009, is touring for his final novel in his Ambergris Cycle, "Finch," published by Underland Books, and for his writers' guide "Booklife," published by Tachyon Publications. His associated Booklifenow website focus on sustainable creativity, and is a unique writing guide to sustainable careers and sustainable creativity - the first to fully integrate discussion of the role of new media into topics that have always been of interest to writers.. With his wife, Ann VanderMeer, he's edited the charity anthology "Last Drink Bird Head," "New Weird," and "Steampunk." His short fiction has appeared in Conjunctions, Library of America's American Fantastic Tales, and several year's best anthologies. He writes nonfiction for The Washington Post Book World, Omnivoracious, The New York Times Book Review, the B&N Review, and many others.
S. G. Browne, is the author of "Breathers: A Zombie's Lament," a dark comedy about life after undeath told from the perspective of a zombie. His second novel, "Fated," is a dark, irreverent comedy about fate, destiny, and the consequences of getting involved in the lives of humans. His take on zombies, "So what happened to make them so popular today? I'll tell you what happened. Zombies were taken out of their proverbial archetypal box. No longer are they just the shambling, mindless, flesh-eating ghouls we've known and loved for most of the part four decades. They've expanded their range, become more versatile. More well-rounded. And who doesn't enjoy a well-rounded zombie?" Introduce the modern complications of a zombie trying to find himself in this mad, mad world, and how best to bring your undead girlfriend home to meet mom, and you've got yourself a story!! Check out the blog on http://www.sgbrowne.com, and ask him your own zombie apocalypse questions.
Seating is limited - first come first seated
The Variety Preview Theatre
The Hobart Bldg., 1st Floor - entrance is between Quiznos & Citibank 582 Market St. @ 2nd and Montgomery, San Francisco
phone, night of event - 415-225-7445

SF in SF Reading/Event (San Francisco, CA) (Thanks, Rina!)

Previously:

World's most awesome cheap Chinese toy

Mark Frauenfelder — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 16:54:42 PST

My daughter earned this spinning top for selling wrapping paper in a school fundraiser. It plays the theme from Beverly Hills Cop and draws a laser circle on the floor. Thirty years ago the technology in this toy would have cost $100,000.

Choose your own visualization

Rob Beschizza — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 16:27:09 PST

Intriguing visualizations of the possibilities and paths from various classic Choose Your Own Adventure books. Now, someone do Fighting Fantasy! [Samizdat]

Fist sledgehammer

Cory Doctorow — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 15:04:12 PST

DesignMartus's portfolio has some beautiful metalwork on display, around a motif of hands and fists. This wonderful fist sledgehammer would be a fine addition to any toolkit.

Early Tools (via Make)

Theme Park Maps through the ages

Cory Doctorow — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 15:01:25 PST

Theme Park Brochures, a superb gallery of theme-park maps from the 30s onwards -- I especially love the hand-drawn ones.

Theme Park Brochures (via MeFi)

Thinking off

Mark Frauenfelder — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 15:01:53 PST

Big Think video: "According to Rutgers psychology professor Barry Komisaruk, some women are able to achieve orgasm through mental activity alone. What can their brains tell us about the neurological basis of sexual pleasure, and can these discoveries help patients who are unable to orgasm at all?"

Clock on a bicycle chain

Cory Doctorow — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 14:53:57 PST

A reader writes, "The Catena wall clock harkens back to traditional mechanical clocks. Copper digits mounted onto a bicycle chain place emphasis on the cyclical nature of time. This clock is a striking clock, literally and figuratively."

Well, not literally. But figuratively. And man, was this thing ever designed to fire up the desiderata center of my brain.

Catena Wall Clock

EFF lawyers grin like holy fools, surrounded by a fan of formerly secret government documents

Cory Doctorow — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 14:53:36 PST

Followers of Boing Boing will know that the Electronic Frontier Foundation has been battling in court to force the US government to disclose documents related to the illegal mass wiretapping that the phone companies and Uncle Sam engaged in as part of the "war on terror." Now the government has blinked, and EFF has the photos to prove it.

Hugh from EFF sez, "A photo of what it looks like when the gov't says 'uncle': EFF lawyers with a mountain of telecom immunity docs."

nate&marcia (Thanks, Hugh!)

Previously:

Aerobics championship video from 1987

David Pescovitz — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 14:48:25 PST

Ladies and Gentlemen, the 1987 Crystal light National Aerobic Championship. (Thanks, Bloggy!)

Virus loads child porn on unwitting users' computers

Mark Frauenfelder — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 14:45:16 PST

Another good reason to get a Mac or use Linux. A Windows-only virus can "visit as many as 40 child porn sites per minute" filling the unsuspecting computer owner's hard drive with child pornography. It has already ruined at least one couple's life.

Deer butt face taxidermy

David Pescovitz — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 14:31:43 PST

Above are examples of deer butt face taxidermy art. Yes, indeedy. For more about this fine craft, visit "Make your own redneck art." Note that the description of the process, and reference to a hunter's "game dressing tool" called "Butt Out," may be offensive to some. Deer butt face mounts can also be found on eBay. (Thanks, Michael-Anne and Barnaby!)

Eye exercise may boost creativity

David Pescovitz — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 15:20:44 PST

A study in the scientific journal Brain and Cognition suggests that increasing the "crosstalk" between the brain's left and right hemispheres can increase creativity. Researchers from the Richard Stockton College of New Jersey ran an experiment on 62 people to gauge creative thinking. After a first try at the task, some of the participants were told to shift their eyes horizontally back and forth for 30 seconds, an exercise that boosts the communication between the hemispheres. Those subjects performed much better on the test the second time around than a control group who stared straight ahead. The scientists published the results of their study in the journal Brain and Cognition. From the British Psychological Society Research Digest:

An important factor that the researchers took note of was the participants' handedness. Prior research has suggested that people who have one hand that is particularly dominant, so-called "strong-handers", have less cross-talk between their brain hemispheres compared with people who are more ambidextrous or "mixed handed"...
The key finding is that on their second creativity attempt, strong-handers who'd performed the horizontal eye movements subsequently showed a significant improvement in their creativity, in terms of being more original (i.e. suggesting ideas not proposed by others) and coming up with more categories of use...
The researchers also showed that, for strong-handers, the beneficial effects of the eye movement exercise lasted nine minutes for originality, but just three to six minutes in terms of coming up with more categories of use.

"Performing horizontal eye movement exercises can boost your creativity"

Dogs welcome soldiers home

Mark Frauenfelder — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 14:03:49 PST

To commemorate Veterans Day, Mental Floss collected videos of very happy dogs greeting returning soldiers.

3D medical viz system with Xbox controller

David Pescovitz — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 13:56:47 PST

Iowa State University researchers developed a system to converts common 2D MRI and CAT medical scans into 3D visualizations, enabling physicians to fly through the body using an Xbox controller. Apparently, their software is much simpler to use, and the visualizations easier to explore, than existing 3D medical imaging technologies. The engineers have now spun out their innovation in to a start-up, called BodyViz. Their hope is that the software can be used to train medical students and enable physicians to try procedures before doing them on live patients. The PC software sells for $4,995, plus $69 for the wireless Xbox controller. From Iowa State:

Two-dimensional imaging technologies have been used in medicine for a long time, said (BodyViz co-founder) Eliot Winer, an Iowa State associate professor of mechanical engineering and an associate director of Iowa State’s Virtual Reality Applications Center. But those flat images aren’t easily read and understood by anybody but specialists.
“If I’m a surgeon or an oncologist or a primary care physician, I deal with patients in 3-D,” Winer said.
(The creators) like to quote a doctor who told a reporter that when preparing for complex procedures, “2-D is guessing and 3-D is knowing.”

"Iowa State engineers develop 3-D software to give doctors, students a view inside the body"

McDonald's Gitmo is hiring!

Cory Doctorow — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 13:43:46 PST

Joe sez, "The McDonald's franchise at the Guantanamo Bay Naval Base in Cuba is looking for an assistant manager. The ideal candidate will have previous restaurant management experience, a valid U.S. passport and a willingness to relocate to Cuba. Apparently, no special security clearance is required. Perks include great weather, potential tax free status for year-round residents, and half of the successful candidate's stateside rent paid by the company. The Gitmo McDonald's has been in operation since 1986, and serves the base's 6000 inhabitants, including military personnel, their families, Jamaican and Filipino guest workers. and 215 detainees, who can make take-out orders for Big Macs, fries and other items."

Guantanamo-based McDonald's seeks applicants (Thanks, Joe!)

Previously:

EFF to represent Yes Men in Chamber of Commerce lawsuit

Cory Doctorow — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 13:41:46 PST

Rebecca from the Electronic Frontier Foundation sez, "More news about the Yes Men and the Chamber of Commerce. BoingBoing reported on the lawsuit the Chamber filed over the activists' political criticism of the Chamber's stance on climate change and the Chamber's DMCA takedown attempt. Now it's official: EFF and Davis Wright Tremaine, LLP, will defend the Yes Men and other activists involved in the action. As EFF Senior Staff Attorney Corynne McSherry says: "The action was a brilliant piece of political theater, but it had a serious purpose: calling attention to the Chamber's political activities. This is core political speech, protected by the First Amendment." Next step in the case -- a response to the Chamber's complaint is due later this month in the U.S. District Court for District of Columbia."

"The action was a brilliant piece of political theater, but it had a serious purpose: calling attention to the Chamber's political activities," said EFF Senior Staff Attorney Corynne McSherry. "This is core political speech, protected by the First Amendment. We're very pleased that Davis Wright Tremaine -- with its long, successful history of protecting free speech rights of Americans -- has joined us in helping these activists battle a transparent attempt at censorship."
"U.S. courts have recognized that political parody lies at the heart of the First Amendment," said Davis Wright Tremaine LLP partner Bruce Johnson. "Even if the party parodied refuses to giggle--or even panics and sues--free speech will ultimately triumph. We look forward to a prompt dismissal of this case and a reaffirmation of the rights of all Americans to poke fun at the pompous and powerful."
The Chamber has pulled out all the stops in its effort to silence the activists. First, it sent an improper copyright takedown notice to the Yes Men's upstream provider, demanding that a parody website posted in support of the action be removed immediately and resulting in the temporary shutdown of not only the spoof site but hundreds of other sites hosted by May First/People Link. Next, the Chamber filed suit against the activists in federal court, claiming among other things the activism infringed their trademarks.

EFF to Represent Yes Men in Court Battle Over Chamber of Commerce Action (Thanks, Rebecca!)

Previously:

Sean Hannity plans to blame liberals for his mis-use of video

Mark Frauenfelder — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 13:22:18 PST

Predict what excuse Sean Hannity will use to explain why he misused old video to back up his claim that a large crowd came to Washington to protest the health care bill. (One rule: his excuse must somehow blame the liberals).

Graph compares rock music quality with US oil production 1949-2007

Mark Frauenfelder — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 14:59:49 PST

From GOOD: "The remarkable similarity between the arcs of U.S. oil production and songs in Rolling Stone's "500 Greatest Songs of All Time" by year is staggering." (Graph created by Overthinkingit.com)

Eleven myths of de-cluttering

Mark Frauenfelder — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 12:50:36 PST

Gretchen Rubin, author of the forthcoming book, The Happiness Project, offers several good de-cluttering tips in a blog post titled "Eleven Myths of De-Cluttering."

Here are the first three:

1. "I need to get organized." No! Don't get organized is your first step.
2. "I need to be hyper-organized." I fully appreciate the pleasure of having a place for everything, and perhaps counter-intuitively, I believe it’s easier to put things away in an exact place, rather than a general place (“the third shelf of the coat closet,” not “a closet.”) However, this impulse can become destructive: if you’re spending a lot of time alphabetizing your spices, organizing your shoes according to heel height, creating eighty categories for your home files, etc., consider whether you need to be quite so precisely organized. I find this particularly true with toys – I’ve spent hours sorting pretend food, Polly Pockets pieces, and tea sets, only to find everything a jumble the next day.
3. "I need some more inventive storage containers." See #1. If you get rid of everything you don’t need, you may not need any fancy containers.

In short, she's a fan of getting rid of stuff. Me, too!

Eleven Myths of De-Cluttering

Pratchett's "Unseen Academicals" - a gift to Discworld lovers and an argument for the importance of sport

Cory Doctorow — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 12:36:41 PST

I always celebrate when a new Terry Pratchett novel hits the stands -- doubly so now that health problems are slowing him down from his normal superhuman output to a merely impressive one. But I confess I was a little less excited to learn that the newest Pratchett Discworld book, Unseen Academicals, was about football (AKA soccer). I'm not a sports fan. I wasn't a hockey fan when I lived in Canada. I wasn't a baseball fan when I lived in the US. I'm not a footie fan now that I live in the UK. But I gave it a whirl: this is Terry Pratchett, after all. I'd read his grocery lists.

A word about Pratchett for the uninitiated. Terry Pratchett is an incredibly funny, warmly human British fantasy (mostly) novelist. He writes at an impossible rate. Most of his books are part of a sprawling, infinitely varied fantasy series called Discworld, about a flat, disc-shaped planet that is carried on the backs of four gigantic elephants who tramp in slow circles around the back of a vast, interstellar turtle called A'Tuin. On Discworld, everything happens. There are imperial battles and barbarians; witches and trolls and dwarves in the hills; animist spirits on lost continents; and there is a vast and wonderful and terrible city called Ankh-Morpork. Ankh-Morpork is presided over by a tyrant called Lord Vetinari, who is quite progressive as tyrants go. For one thing, he's let the trolls, vampires, medusae, dwarves, werewolves, zombies, and assorted other nonhumans into the city. For another, he's organized the thieves into a guild to whom one can pay an annual license and be guaranteed a life free from official thieving (freelance thieves are dealt with most firmly by the guild).

You can read the Discworld books in almost any order. Some of them run in little trilogies that follow the same characters, but even if you picked up the second or third volume of these, you'd probably get along OK -- Pratchett is quite good at getting newcomers to Discworld up to speed on its basics.

Back to Unseen Academicals. Here's the setup: the wizards of Unseen University have discovered that a key grant from a former Archchancellor requires them to keep a football team that plays regular matches. It's been decades since the last UU team was fielded, and they're in imminent danger of losing a substantial source of funding. Meanwhile, football itself -- as played on the streets of Ankh-Morpork -- is a vicious game that is more riot than sport, and the wizards of UU have no intention of getting involved in that mess.

So they cook up a plan to reform football -- and to field a team of their own, coached by Nutt, a mysterious (and erudite) goblin who has been heretofore employed as a candle-dribbler (no self-respecting wizard wants to do magic by the light of a pristine, unmarked candle) in the cellars of UU.

That's the setup. Here's the payoff: it's brilliant. The novelist's best trick is to make you care about stuff you don't care about. It's what Fever Pitch does. And it's what Unseen Academicals does, too. Pratchett shows us how sport is part of the emotional life of a city, and how its significance resonates across generations, across regional parochialism, across social strata, uniting us behind something that transcends the mere game.

What's more, Pratchett shows us how fragile a thing this is, how vulnerable it is to greed and thuggishness and venality, and how those who defend the game do so for the best reasons imaginable. As Pratchett says, "The thing about football is, it's not about football."

I wouldn't call this the best Discworld novel ever (I think my vote for that honor would go to Monstrous Regiment, which, incidentally, can be read without having read any of the other Pratchett novels). But it's in the top five.

A word of warning: it's also one of the most inside-baseball (you should forgive the expression) of the Discworld books, requiring a fair bit of familiarity with the previous books in the series to be fully appreciated. It's a real gift from Pratchett to his fans, in other words, and I, for one, am grateful for it.

Unseen Academicals (Amazon US)

Unseen Academicals (Amazon UK)

Previously: