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Fall 2006
Computer Science 98/198
2 Unit(s)

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About the Course:

UPDATE: Class time has changed by half an hour, and is now from 6-8. And we start in the 3rd week (because Labor Day is a Monay, and we’re so brilliant we forgot that).

UPDATE: Syllabus is now online, with all kinds of details and whatnot. Huzzah!

Picture a world shaped like a pancake. Now place that world on the backs of four impossibly large elephants (for stability’s sake). Now place those elephants on the back of an unimaginably large sea turtle. Only it isn’t really a sea turtle, as it’s not swiming through the sea – it’s swimming through space. This is the Discworld.

The focus of this DeCal is, obviously, the Discworld and all the hilarious hijinks and shenaniganery that ensue there. So if you’ve read these before, or haven’t, or want to, or someone said you should, or you just like fantasy and/or laughing till your cry and your stomach tries to swallow you because it hurts so bad then this class will rock your socks.

We won’t be attempting to explore tihs world (there are no maps). We won’t be trying to understand it (it really can’t be done, and besides, what would be the point?). We won’t, as is often the case in classes of this type, even try to give you a decent, reasonable, objective, well spread sampling of the Discworld Novels (there’s too many, we’re not like other classes anyway, and even if we were we still wouldn’t do it because we’re going to teach what we want to teach, so there). And since Pratchett’s books don’t really have any particular order (at least not one required for reading them), it doesn’t even matter!

What we will do is read a smattering of books (roughly six, in fact) that we like a lot. They might not be the best, or most exemplary, or anything at all really, but they are all hillarious. And we like them best, and since we’re teaching, we get to tell you what books to read, and those are them. They’re in the syllabus.

How to Enroll:

Enrollement takes place during the first several class meetings, wherein we, your humble instructors, shall dispense our vast wisdom, varied opinions, expansive thoughts on life and the meaning of it all, CCNs, etc.

If you miss the first class, or even the second one, show up anyway. We might be in a good mood that day and let you in (and then again, we might not).