Hello friends, and welcome to the end of the world! My name is Meghan and it is my utmost pleasure and privilege to reread Good Omens with you. Written by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett, Good Omens is a delight of a novel and has been a fan favorite for decades. It will soon be a six-part series airing on Amazon Prime in 2019. To prepare for that momentous occasion, we’ll be reading the book together over the next ten weeks and discussing what makes it so wonderful.
Without any further ado, let’s get started. This week’s discussion covers the first 35 pages of the novel (going by the 2006 paperback edition published by William Morrow).
Summary
Good Omens begins where EVERYTHING begins. An angel and a snake are chatting, wondering if this latest zany idea of God’s is going to work out. Humans? Doesn’t sound promising. The angel, called Aziraphale, is fretting over these new creations. The snake, called Crawly (though he’s thinking of changing it, it’s not really HIM, you know?), has more of a laissez-faire attitude about the situation, and wonders idly why that tree was stuck there if no one was supposed to touch it. It begins to rain, the first rain in all of creation, and Crawly asks where Aziraphale’s giant flaming sword has gone. Aziraphale wrings his hands and admits that he gave it to Adam and Eve. Eve is already expecting, you see, he couldn’t just leave them out in the cold! He and Crawly stand (slither?) in silence as the first rain turns into the first storm, wondering about good, evil, and their place in this brave new world.
We jump ahead (behind?) to eleven years in the past. We learn many things here. For one, the Earth is a Libra. For another, the demon Crowley is responsible for many of Great Britain’s traffic woes. And last (but most importantly), we learn that any tape left in a car for a fortnight will always transform into Best of Queen albums. Even if that car is Crowley’s 1926 black Bentley. Crowley is late for a very important date: someone very special is being born today. He meets with two demon princes of Hell in a graveyard to learn the fabulous news; the world is going to end soon and Hell is going to win! Praise be to Satan! They hand Crowley a ticking time bomb in a basket and send him on his way. Crowley speeds off in his Bentley and has a very uncomfortable talk with Satan through his car speakers. This is an important job and if any part of it goes wrong then Crowley will pay the price. Left with his instructions, Crowley has no choice but to drive while the thing in the basket begins to cry.
Elsewhere, a man named Mr. Young is pacing in a hospital as he waits for his wife to give birth. This hospital belongs to the Chattering Order of Saint Beryl, a relatively small and unknown order who take vows to say absolutely anything that pops into their heads. This does not fill Mr. Young with confidence but, well, nuns are sort of strange and inscrutable anyway, so he isn’t overly bothered by it either. He goes outside to have a smoke just in time to see Crowley park haphazardly and run into the hospital, asking if it’s started yet. Bewildered, he mistakes Crowley for a doctor and lets him dash right in.
This hospital has been chosen for a reason. The Chattering Order is a group of Satanic nuns and they’re in on the big secret. Their job is to take the son being born to a powerful American diplomat and switch him with the newly spawned Antichrist. Crowley hands the baby to Sister Mary Loquacious so that she can orchestrate the switch. Unfortunately, Sister Mary isn’t the best nun for the job. The American diplomat’s wife and Mr. Young’s wife are both having sons at the exact same moment. Add the infant Antichrist into the mix and, well, mistakes are made. Mistaking Mr. Young for the American husband, Sister Mary allows the wrong babies to be switched. Proud of a job she thinks is well done, she tries to get Mr. Young to choose a suitably demonic name for his new child.
Commentary
Could there be any better way to open a novel? We’re immediately charmed by Aziraphale and Crowley—it takes less than two pages to fall in love with them and to understand them as characters. Aziraphale is precise and kind and a worrier. Crawly/Crowley has a swagger and a sarcastic kind of honesty about him. It also introduces some of the central themes of the novel, such as the ineffability of God and Satan and the immortal lifelong friendship between Aziraphale and Crowley. I also love the framing of this scene: it’s the very first dark and stormy night. Brilliant.
After the list of the novel’s dramatis personæ, we jump into the story proper, which means getting to see Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett being more clever than should be humanly possible. The just astonishingly perfect breakdown of why the Earth is a Libra might be my favorite opening segments of all time. We also get our very first footnote! I love the footnotes in this story. I think they must be mainly Terry’s doing, since they are also so integral to the Discworld novels. Either way, they are hilarious. And of course, there’s also the ongoing riff about Queen which makes me so happy. I have no idea why they picked Queen and not The Beatles or The Stones or, I dunno, Herman’s Hermits or something, but it just works so beautifully. I actually own a Queen cassette that I found in a thrift store; I keep it in my car’s glove box because I’m under the possible misapprehension that I’m funny. No, my car doesn’t even have a cassette player. No, YOU’RE the weird one!
Buy the Book
Your Favorite Band Cannot Save You
Anyway, we meet Hastur and Ligur, two of Hell’s demon princes and both total sticks in the mud. I love how Crowley messes with them. Both of them fire off an “All hail Satan” and Crowley just ambles over with a smile, a little wave, and a cheerful “hi!”—I already can’t stop thinking about how amazing David Tennant is going to be in this role. After some demonic housekeeping, the pair hand over the new baby Antichrist and send him off to start the clock on the apocalypse. Crowley is not down for this. He is the opposite of down for this. He’s got it good on Earth. He has his beautiful car, he has little restaurants, he has extremely sharp sunglasses. Why go and mess all that up?
Crowley has no choice but to deliver the baby to the Chattering Order. The entire hospital scene strikes me as something that could have come out of the very best of old British comedy. Why isn’t John Cleese there somewhere as Basil Fawlty, hospital admin? Why isn’t Father Ted there as head priest, or Patricia Routledge as Hyacinth the Mother Superior? Surely there must be a Blackadder involved! (Look, I watched a lot of PBS as I was growing up, I apologize for nothing.)
I love Sister Mary; I used to work with a girl who was just like her. She was sweetness and light with a kind word for everyone and would have forgotten her own head if it wasn’t screwed on. I can easily see how the baby swap gets so screwed up. All babies look like angry potatoes anyway. How can you tell them apart?
Only 35 pages in and Good Omens already delivers on great characters, absurd situations, and enough laugh-out-loud moments to make people on the train give you worrying looks. Ask me how I know that last part.
Pun Corner
All of which brings us to my favorite part of the reread, Pun Corner! In a book so full of clever wordplay, hilarious asides, and entertaining footnotes it feels only right to take a moment to really highlight and appreciate some of these wonderful little moments—and feel free to note your own favorites in the comments!
- (Describing Hastur and Ligur) “If Bruce Springsteen had ever recorded ‘Born To Lurk,’ these two would have been on the album cover.” Just the mental image conjured up by this line is a thing of beauty.
- “Crowley blessed under his breath.” I just… what would that even sound like? Can you say “amen” and “hallelujah” in the same tone reserved for words with four letters?
- (in a footnote) “It is possibly worth mentioning at this point that Mr. Young thought that paparazzi was a kind of Italian linoleum.” …I love this book so much, you guys.
Thank you so much for joining me on our first Good Omens reread! Next week, we’re reading pages 35 to 72, which is the section that ends right before the chapter “Wednesday.” See you then!
Meghan Ball is an avid reader, writer, and lifelong fan of science fiction and fantasy. When she isn’t losing to a video game or playing the guitar badly, she’s writing short fiction and spending way too much time on Twitter. You can find her there @EldritchGirl. She currently lives in a weird part of New Jersey.
That should be dramatis personae.
Some of the personae are pretty dramatic too, of course :-)
S
@1 – Fixed, thanks!
Good Omens – the only fiction book I’ve ever read that mentions the village I grew up in (Chorleywood), which is arguably also a Hitchhiker’s reference (though almost definitely unintended) – Chorleywood is one stop beyond Rickmansworth, home of the small cafe where Fenchurch had her great realisation.
Crowley’s deliberate manipulation of the route of the M25 makes more sense than any other explanation for it. It explains not only the traffic jams but the fact that everyone who grows up inside it assumes that it’s where civilisation ends, and those who grow up outside it know for a fact that it’s where civilisation ends, just from the other direction.
As to why it’s Best of Queen rather than anything else that cassettes in cars turn into – every car has a Best of Queen cassette/CD that no-one remembers buying (I don’t drive so I’ve cadged a lot of lifts with friends – there’s always a Best of Queen CD, there always used to be a Best of Queen tape). The same is not true of the Beatles or the Stones. This might just be a British thing, but I’m pretty sure Neil and Pterry picked it for that reason.
Sister Mary cooing over the newborn Antichrist might be my favorite moment in the book. It’s like something I would write, and I didn’t expect anyone else would do so.
The book’s level of technological and cultural detail could make it feel dated (and less relatable outside the UK). But apparently this aspect of it remains funny and relatable.
Aaaand I dreamed about the Horsepersons again right after rereading this segment of the book for the Reread, even though they’re only briefly mentioned. I *will* make myself get over my dread of these gits. I categorically *like* fictional villains, damnit. These are just too believeable. But they don’t bother anyone else like they bother me.
“Teensie weensie little hoofikins” I love Sister Mary so much, makes me giggle every time I read the book. Please let her be as funny on the show
@@.-@ I always wondered about the M25. People of England, let me know just how accurate this is.
@5 I kind of like the book being technologically stuck in the 80s/90s. Modern technology would ruin some of the set pieces. I’m hoping the show stays in that time instead of modernizing it…
@6 I have such high hopes for her in the show. That line alone is just perfection. She gets even better as the book progresses!
This is quite possibly the best audio book ever made. I am eagerly awaiting the rest of the read-through.
@8.
I’m not English, but I live in London and believe me @@.-@ is absolutely right.
Also the whole bit about both sides claiming credit for Milton Keynes.
I keep wondering what happened to the extra baby. Two women are having babies. Cowley provides another baby, the alleged Antichrist. When it all settles, one woman has a normal baby and one has the Antichrist. What happened to the third one?
Did I miss what happened to one of the peas?
@13
It is revealed in one of the footnotes halfway through that the third child is Greasy Johnson, the local bully, who secretly has a tropical fish collection. In the epilogue he’s about to discover the fad for American Football sweeping Europe, which is even more appropriate given he’s technically the American Diplomat’s son.
See? You were right about the babies.
@@.-@: I wouldn’t be so sure about subtle Hitchiker’s references being unintended. Remember that one of Gaiman’s earlier published works was a biography of Douglas Adams.
@0, re footnotes: I love the footnotes, but I would not assume that anything that looks like Pterry is by Pterry. I don’t know the steps in Gaiman’s development as a writer (my first reaction on seeing the original cover was “Who’s this bloke who gets his name above Pterry’s?”), but by 2005 he was an accomplished mimic; “Sunbird” is a note-perfect pastiche of R. A. Lafferty, an author who is usually badly parodied (when he’s remembered at all) because he’s so easy to overdo.
I missed a couple of opportunities to ask whether the Chattering Berylians were connected to the Leaping Berylians (of Bedazzled)
@13: there’s no real explanation next week; some time down the line we’ll get an endpoint but no process. Yes, that’s geekily obscure.
Yes, I’m pretty sure you can. Even more so, I’m pretty sure David Tennant can, and I cannot wait!
This has been one of my favourite books for years, and the upcoming mini-series has had me resume my old hobby of thrusting it eagerly at people with “Here, read this, it’s awesome!”. :D
Also, amen has four letters. So.
@16 I think it would be a safe bet to say that anything that looks like Pterry may very well be Pterry; he is on record saying he did the bulk of the physical writing since Gaiman was busy with Sandman at the time.
I particularly love every single tape transforming into Best of Queen.
@16
British editions have Terry Pratchett’s name first as he was considerably better known than Neil Gaiman while I understand that the US editions have Neil Gaiman’s name first as he is much better known there than Pratchett, or so I have been told.
According to an interview (?) I read a while back, yes, the bulk was written by Pratchett but Gaiman wrote the scenes with Death as he wanted to have a go at a character so strongly associated with Pratchett. Meanwhile Sir Terry wanted to collaborate with someone as he was unsure about writing a novel set in the present day.
I read somewhere that Gaiman did the writing of the other Horsepersons as well, so he’s the one I cuss at when they torment me. Not that Pratchett wasn’t perfectely capable of inventing really creepy things whe he chose to.
@19: I hadn’t seen reports (or even quotes) that Pterry did the lion’s share of the the writing, although Gaiman did say (in the essay introducing Pterry as Worldcon GoH in 2004) that Pterry was much more into building the book in an orderly way like an architect designing a building (very approximate quote).
@21:
I’m not sure of this. I was more current with prose SF 1990 but not reading much short fiction, so my not recognizing Gaiman at all might or might not be significant — but Pratchett had form for text fiction (several Discworld novels and an assortment of other material, some in SFBC editions), while Gaiman had a few short stories. I’m not sure how well known Gaiman was even in the graphic-novel community, since The Sandman first issue was only in January 1989 (although he’d had some short series before then), but my recollection is that there wasn’t nearly as much crossover then as now, so he wouldn’t have been much known to book readers in the US. It’s possible they swapped the names simply for fairness (cf the later edition with two covers on which the names alternated), and that the balance of familiarity was less unfavorable to Gaiman in the US. (I remember a hug autograph line for Pratchett in the UK in 1987.)
@0 Totally agree – cannot wait to see David Tennant as Crowley. I’m listening to the audio book now, and so many of the inflections the performer uses for Crowley seem perfect for Tennant. I wonder if that had any influence on the way they played the characters?
@@@@@ 15 – Maybe, but it would be a pretty lucky coincidence; if the A40’s bad, going round from Denham up to Chorleywood is genuinely the logical thing to do if you’re heading out towards Oxfordshire.
I once accidentality got on the M25 going in the wrong direction. (In my defence I was very hungover at the time).
I didn’t notice for a couple of junctions, but I eventually worked it out, and resolved to come off at the next junction, swing round to the correct carriageway and head home only a half-hour delayed.
Unfortunately for me, I’d picked the wrong junction, and my only choices were to go north on the A1, or, to go south on the A1, with no opportunity to turn around. I only had a few seconds to decide, and chose south, on the basis that I’d been to London before and so I probably knew it better than whatever is north up the A1 (looking at the map now, I can see that I only narrowly missed the delights of Stevenage). Of course, there were no convenient junctions for me to turn round at, so I ended up driving all the way south to the edge of London proper, and then back around the north circular in the correct (anticlockwise) direction, before finally spotting a familiar sign and then back out to the M25, then M4, then home. I made it back home about five hours after my friends got back, and was thoroughly fed up. To this day I still blame Crowly and his bloody M25 :(
Good Omens is one of my all time favourite books and one of the few that I cannot read with others present – I annoy them too much laughing out loud and making them listen to the best bits. It is entirely true about the M25, and it is sad to say that Crowley has not mended his ways but is currently hard at work on the “upgrading” of the M6.
Not exactly a pun, but note that when Crowley jumps out of his Bentley at the hospital, he “snaked toward the entrance”.
I’ve never seen anywhere that Terry wrote the bulk of the book. He didn’t. He wrote more than I did, though. We estimated that by the end I’d written 50,000 words and he had written 60,000. But it was an estimate as we also rewrote and added to each other’s material, footnoted our own and each other’s material, and co-plotted it all, which often made it very hard to figure out who had actually written what.
Well that ends that controversy, I guess.
I read this book when I was 14 in 1992. It lead to a lifelong love of Pratchett and Gaiman’s work. The footnotes, the laugh out loud moments- I even bought a Queen best of and started a love affair with Queen!
It has always been my favourite book. And then you add David Tennant and Martin Sheen to the mix and I am beyond excited.
Doing a reread with fellow enthusiasts is a joy!
I love the way the depict the characters, the angels and demons, like a bunch of geezers you know from down the road or that you’ve seen in the boozer. The ‘Born to Lurke’ had me chuckling. I cant wait to read more.
Mr Gaiman
My apologies.
“…because I was Keeper of the Official Master Copy I can say that I wrote a bit over two thirds of GO. However, we were on the phone to each other every day, at least once. If you have an idea during a brainstorming session with another guy, whose idea is it? One guy goes and writes 2,000 words after thirty minutes on the phone, what exactly is the process that’s happening?”
TP, alt.fan.pratchett, 1992-08-08 13:52:36 PST
I’d just like to thank Mr. Gaiman for being here in the comments. Your presence makes this all the more enjoyable.
Personally, my favorite footnote in this section is the history of the Chattering Order, especially the bit where the nuns are permitted to shut up for half an hour on Tuesday afternoons and, if they wish, play table tennis. Brilliant, that bit.
I don’t know how popular the name Damien is now, but I had a childhood friend named Damian. He had a brother named Lucien.
I have always loved the CAVEAT on the publisher information page. Go look it up yourself!
35 pages in the Morrow paperback is 23 pages in the 1996 Ace mmpb edition.
I’m thoroughly impressed if that is really Mr Gaiman responding in the comments, and if its genuine, Thanks for the excellent book!
Sad that the passing of PTerry means we will never see 668: the neighbour of the beast; though I think that this title has been ripped off numerous times now.
There’s a big bit about ‘who wrote what’ on wikipedia and in the intro to my copy of the book too.
In 1990, they were probably just the right combination of ubiquitous but past the first flush of their popularity for their tapes to seem in excessive supply. Slightly older bands wouldn’t quite have that.
@39
Not to mention that there never actually was a “Best of Queen” album – they had Greatest Hits I & II. But Greatest Hits I was definitely a ubiquitous album at the time – it spent a staggering 17 years in the UK top 200 albums charts, and only dropped off the top 75 in 1993.
The next most everpresent would be Abba Gold, but it came out after the book. I am now entertaining an image of Beelzebub talking to Crowley in the middle of Dancing Queen instead of Bohemian Rhapsody.
“Having the time of your life … ooooh”
@39/@40 — Maybe any cassette left in an American car for more than two weeks turns into a copy of The Eagles’ Greatest Hits?
The explanation from the Good Omens page in the Annotated Pratchett Files, which I put in the comments on this week’s post because I didn’t think to do so last week:
– [p. 3] “[…] all tapes left in a car for more than about a fortnight metamorphose into ‘Best of Queen’ albums.”
In an interview in Comics Buyer’s Guide with Terry and Neil, shortly after the American release of Good Omens, Terry proposed the theory that, when you’re driving through the country late at night, and there’s nothing on the radio, you find yourself stopping in at an all-night gas station and looking through the tape rack; the only thing there remotely tolerable is a Best of Queen, so you buy that. Two weeks later you can’t remember how the thing got there, so you get rid of it, only to go through the same process again. Neil’s theory was that tapes really do turn into Best of Queen albums.
It’s been said to death now, but it’s true: Pratchett and Gaiman couldn’t have chosen any other band, because something by Queen happens to actually be the tape you find in a car, yours or someone else’s. I’m okay with that. I’m less okay with the phenomenon where books used to always be something by Jeffrey Archer, and are now likely to be something by Dan Brown.
Why isn’t Father Ted there?
That would be an ecumenical matter.