It also helps that some of the things Pratchett was mocking - advertising, product placement and crass commercialisation - have become if anything even more dominant forces in modern films. One joke feels stunning prescient - a troll actor calling himself 'Rock' and there being widespread mirth at the idea of an actor with such a name - until you realise that Pratchett is referencing Rock Hudson rather than Dwayne Johnson, but amusingly that joke still works for the next generation. A series of King Kong gags are fortunately still relevant thanks to more Kong movies being made, although the Keystone Kops and Laurel and Hardy references might go over younger readers' heads. It helps that Pratchett avoids contemporary movie references (the novel came out in 1990) in favour of more classic and long-lived ones. It's certainly not as tightly-plotted and constructed a novel as Mort or Guards! Guards! That doesn't stop it being entertaining. It's a solid format and one that results in a much greater variety of stories than you might expect, although there is the sense that Pratchett didn't have much more of an idea here beyond ' Discworld movies' before starting writing, as the plot only loosely comes together. He'll later do the same thing to rock music ( Soul Music), the theatre ( Maskerade), Christmas ( Hogfather), war ( Jingo), the press ( The Truth), the post office ( Going Postal), banking ( Making Money) and football ( Unseen Academicals), among many other examples. Pratchett finds a facet of our everyday life that he finds interesting and transplants it to the Discworld, where he subjects it to all kinds of satirical analysis and character explorations, having a huge amount of fun in the process. If there's ever such as a thing as an archetypal Discworld novel, Moving Pictures is probably it. They are more surprised when it turns out that the magic of the movies is causing the threads of reality to break down and endanger the future of the Discworld. Semi-rejected wizard Victor Tugelbend and Theda Withel - who comes from a small town you've probably never heard of - are surprised when they become the biggest stars in Holy Wood. The Guild of Alchemists have created a new form of entertainment: moving pictures! Soon, Ankh-Morpork, perennial city of fads, is gripped by the phenomenon and everyone wants to break into the business.

Moving Pictures by Terry Pratchett