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Strata
	First edition
Author	Terry Pratchett
Language	English
Genre	Science fiction comedy
Publisher	Colin Smythe
Publication date	1981
Publication place	United Kingdom

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Strata is a 1981 science fiction comedy novel by English writer Sir Terry Pratchett. It is one of Pratchett's first novels and among the few science fiction novels he wrote, along with The Dark Side of the Sun, Only You Can Save Mankind, The Nome Trilogy and the co-authored The Long Earth.

Although Strata may take place in a different fictional universe and is classed more science fiction than fantasy, it could be said to be a kind of precursor to the Discworld novels, as it also features a flat Earth similar to the Discworld. It has been called a "pre-consideration" of Discworld^{[citation needed]}, though the plot and characters are modelled on a parody of the novel Ringworld by Larry Niven.^[1]

Plot summary

Kin Arad is a human planetary engineer working for "the Company", a human organisation that manufactures habitable planets using techniques and equipment salvaged from an extinct alien race, the "Spindle Kings", who excelled at terraforming.

The express purpose of the Company's planet-manufacturing business is to create dispersed branches of humanity, diverse enough to ensure the whole species' survival for eternity. The Earth's population in the past has been decimated due to the lethal "Mindquakes", epidemic mass deaths caused by too much homogeneity among the populace.^[2]^: 279

All planets built by the Company are carefully crafted with artificial strata containing synthetic fossils, indistinguishable from the real thing. On occasion, however, mischievous Company employees attempt to place anomalous objects in the strata as practical jokes, like running shoes and other out-of-place artifacts, hoping to raise confusion among future archaeologists when the planets' beginnings have been long forgotten. However the Company forbids this, and secretly monitors the generated strata in order to detect embedded jokes, fearing such actions may cause the collapse of entire civilizations when the artifacts are eventually unearthed.^[2]^{: 14–15}

Kin and two aliens are recruited by the mysterious Jago Jalo to join an expedition. One alien is a paranoid, four-armed, frog-like, muscular "kung" named Marco. The other alien is a bear-like "shand", historian and linguist nicknamed Silver. Jago Jalo is a human who returned from a relativistic journey he embarked on more than a thousand years ago, where he made a stunning discovery: A flat Earth.

When the team rendezvous with Jago Jalo on the kung homeworld, the violent Jalo unexpectedly has a heart attack and dies. Kin Arad is shocked by the large store of weapons on-board Jalo's spaceship, and has misgivings about the expedition; Silver and Marco, however, see the possibility of reaping great technological rewards and launch the vessel on autopilot.

When the expedition arrives at Jalo's pre-programmed coordinates, they find a flattened version of the medieval Eastern hemisphere of the Earth they had originally departed from, before their disturbing rendezvous with Jalo. Clearly artificial, the disc rotates around its hub, and is contained inside a gigantic hollow sphere with tiny artificial "stars" affixed to the interior, augmented with a small meandering artificial sun, moon, and fake planets revolving around it.

Their ship is hit by one of the "planets" wandering on the interior of the sphere, so Kin, Marco, and Silver are forced to abandon ship. They land on the flat planet with the help of their "lift-belt" equipped suits, while their ship crashes. A return from the flat world now seems impossible, but hoping for assistance from the disc's mysterious builders, Kin, Marco, and Silver set off towards a structure they had spotted at the disc's hub. It is the only thing on the flat "Earth" which does not match the geography of the spherical Earth they left.

En route, the team encounter the superstitious Medieval inhabitants of the disc, who believe the end of the world is near, due to increasingly chaotic climate (caused by the disc's machinery breaking down), the recent disappearance of one of their planets, and the general devastation caused by the ship's crash. The three travelers also discover a number of other differences.

What Kin Arad knows as "Reme" is called "Rome" on the disc, and there is a strange "Christos cult" that is completely unfamiliar to Kin. Also, Venus is conspicuously lacking its giant (lunar-sized) moon "Adonis", which dominates the sunset sky on the Earth Kin Arad came from, which was formative in leading humanity to an early heliocentric world view.^[2]^{: 130–131}

Since only the Eastern hemisphere of Earth is represented, the continent of America is completely missing, so Kin, Marco, and Silver rescue a party of Vikings in the process of searching for Vinland, when their ship is about to sail over the edge of the world.

The flat world is apparently an extremely old and sophisticated automated system. In addition, there are real magical creatures and objects on the disc – Demons, and magic purses, and flying carpets – all of which, the travelers deduce, are themselves highly advanced, sophisticated technological constructs, just like the disc.

The travelers eventually reach the structure at the hub and make contact with the disc’s automated control-systems. They are told that (aside from the recent damage) the sheer build-up of entropy in the old machinery has exceeded the capacity of its advanced robotic maintenance. Catastrophic failure threatens the disc’s further existence. The machines offer to exchange their advanced technology for the construction of a real (spherical) planet as a refuge for the disc "Earth" inhabitants. Kin, the planetary engineer, agrees. She is excited about the massive task at hand; just like the parallel character Louis Wu in Ringworld, Kin is over two hundred years old, and in danger of becoming tired of life.

The implication of the denouement is that the conventional planet Kin Arad will build is in fact the readers' own "Earth". By the end of the story, Kin comes to the further suspicion that the builders of the flat world constructed the whole universe. The evidence of previous races would then be hoaxes, and the flat world itself would be a prank by the universe’s construction crew – analogous to the artificial strata Kin and the Company manufacture, and the occasional prankster employees inserting hoaxes in the artificial strata.

Interpretation

The history of the protagonists' home-planet "Earth" in Strata unfolded very differently from the readers' Earth:

North America is named Valhalla, and was colonised in the first millennium A.D. by Vikings, led by Leif Ericson;
the Roman Empire is known as Reme instead, after the other twin in the story of Romulus and Remus;
the planet Venus is orbited by a moon like Earth's Luna
none of the Abrahamic religions ever developed in its history (a mixture of Buddhism and folk religion seems to have predominated, punctuated by an assortment of flash-in-the-pan religious cults)
humans are much more developed in the field of space travel and have met several other intelligent species, such as the tall, frog-like kungs, and the bear-like shandi

The book implies that the reason for the historical discrepancies is that the readers' "Earth" is actually the replacement world created by Kin Arad for the inhabitants of the malfunctioning disc "Earth", to which the protagonists of the book travel early in the story. While the history and features of the flat "Earth" in Strata clearly is not the one we are familiar with, the history of the flat Earth is consistent with our own, up to the point where the expedition arrives.

Humanity appears to be merely the latest of a long series of intelligent species who have evolved, altered the universe to better suit themselves, and then died out before the next species arose and started the cycle all over again. Before humans, there were the Great Spindle Kings, a race of acutely claustrophobic telepaths, who could live only a few hundred per planet and therefore built entire worlds from scratch to accommodate their population. Before them were the Wheelers, who were themselves preceded by increasingly alien races extending all the way back to the Big Bang.

All of what is known about the intelligent species who have lived before humans is revealed to be incorrect near the end of the book, when the Disc's computer system (built by the universe's actual creators) reveals to Kin that the entire universe is only 70,000 years old and that evidence and remains of long dead civilizations were fabricated by the universe's creators to make the universe appear older than it is (much like the Company-fabricated prehistoric fossils on their created worlds to make them appear older than they really were). Finally, the fact that the computer systems on the disc "Earth" need humans, implies that the universe was itself created by humans as a place for themselves to live.

Translations

Страта (Bulgarian)
Strata (Czech)
Delven (Dutch) (published together with The Dark Side of the Sun in one volume in 1982: republished separately as Strata in 1994)^[3]
Strate-à-gemmes (French)
Strata (German)
Dysk (Polish) (first edition was entitled "Warstwy Wszechświata", Polish for "Layers of the Universe"; "Strata" means "loss" in Polish)
Страта (Russian)

References

^ The Annotated Pratchett File v9.0 - Strata
^ ^a ^b ^c Pratchett, Terry (1988). Strata. Corgi Books.
^ Original publisher's homepage Archived 2005-08-28 at the Wayback Machine

External links

Annotations for Strata
Quotations from Strata
Strata title listing at the Internet Speculative Fiction Database

[1] The Annotated Pratchett File v9.0 - Strata

[Pratchett-1988-2] Pratchett, Terry (1988). Strata. Corgi Books.

[3] Original publisher's homepage Archived 2005-08-28 at the Wayback Machine

[1]

[2]

[3]

@@ Line 1: / Line 1: @@
+{{Short description|1981 novel by Terry Pratchett}}
-:''For discussion regarding the term strata as used in [[geology]], see [[stratum]]. See also [[Strata (disambiguation)]].''
+{{Use dmy dates|date=April 2022}}
 {{Infobox book
 | name          = Strata
 | title_orig    =
 | image         = File:StrataPratchett.jpg
-| caption = First edition
+| caption       = First edition
 | author        = [[Terry Pratchett]]
 | cover_artist  =
@@ Line 21: / Line 22: @@
 }}
-'''''Strata''''' is a 1981 [[science fiction comedy]] novel by [[Terry Pratchett]]. It is one of Pratchett's first novels and one of the few purely [[science fiction]] novels he wrote, along with ''[[The Dark Side of the Sun]]'' and ''[[The Nome Trilogy]]''.
+'''''Strata''''' is a 1981 [[science fiction comedy]] novel by English writer Sir [[Terry Pratchett]]. It is one of Pratchett's first novels and among the few [[science fiction]] novels he wrote, along with ''[[The Dark Side of the Sun]]'', ''[[Only You Can Save Mankind]]'', ''[[The Nome Trilogy]]'' and the co-authored [[The Long Earth]].
-Although it takes place in a different [[fictional universe]] and is more science fiction than [[fantasy]], it could be said to be a kind of precursor to the ''[[Discworld]]'' novels, as it also features a [[flat Earth]] similar to the [[Discworld (world)|Discworld]]. It has been called a "preconsideration" of Discworld, though the plot and characters are modelled on (or parodies of) the novel ''[[Ringworld]]'' by [[Larry Niven]].<ref>[http://www.lspace.org/books/apf/strata.html The Annotated Pratchett File v9.0 - Strata]</ref>
+Although '''''Strata''''' may take place in a different [[fictional universe]] and is classed more science fiction than [[fantasy]], it could be said to be a kind of precursor to the ''[[Discworld]]'' novels, as it also features a [[flat Earth]] similar to the [[Discworld (world)|Discworld]]. It has been called a "pre-consideration" of Discworld{{cn|date=October 2024}}, though the plot and characters are modelled on a parody of the novel ''[[Ringworld]]'' by [[Larry Niven]].<ref>[http://www.lspace.org/books/apf/strata.html The Annotated Pratchett File v9.0 - Strata]</ref>
 ==Plot summary==
+Kin Arad is a human [[planetary engineering|planetary engineer]] working for "the Company", a human organisation that manufactures [[planetary habitability|habitable planets]] using techniques and equipment salvaged from an extinct alien race, the "Spindle Kings", who excelled at [[terraforming]].
-Kin Arad is a human [[planetary engineering|planetary engineer]] working for the ''Company'', a human organisation that "builds" [[planetary habitability|habitable planets]] with techniques and equipment salvaged from the ''Spindle Kings'', an extinct alien race, excelling in [[terraforming]]. The expressed aim of the Company's planet building is to create branches of humanity diverse enough to ensure the whole species' survival for eternity, since the Earth's population in the past has been decimated due to the lethal ''Mindquakes'', epidemic mass deaths caused by too much [[homogeneity and heterogeneity|homogeneity]] among the populace.<ref>Terry Pratchett, ''Strata'' (Corgi Books, 1988), 279</ref>  All planets built by the Company are carefully crafted with artificial strata containing false fossils, indistinguishable from the real thing. On occasion, however, mischievous Company employees will attempt to place anomalous objects in the strata as practical jokes, like running shoes or other [[out-of-place artefact]]s, hoping to cause confusion among future archaeologists when the planets' beginnings have been long forgotten. The Company does not allow this however, and secretly monitors the generated strata in order to detect this, fearing such actions may cause the collapse of entire civilizations when the artefacts are eventually unearthed.<ref>Terry Pratchett, ''Strata'' (Corgi Books, 1988), 14-15</ref>
+The express purpose of the Company's planet-manufacturing business is to create dispersed branches of humanity, diverse enough to ensure the whole species' survival for eternity. The Earth's population in the past has been decimated due to the lethal "Mindquakes", epidemic mass deaths caused by too much [[homogeneity and heterogeneity|homogeneity]] among the populace.<ref name=Pratchett-1988>{{cite book |first=Terry |last=Pratchett |title=Strata |publisher=Corgi Books |year=1988}}</ref>{{rp|page=&nbsp;279}}
-Kin and two aliens, the four-armed [[frog]]-like, [[Paranoia|paranoid]] and [[Muscle|muscular]] ''Kung'' Marco and Silver, a [[bear]]-like ''Shand'', [[historian]] and [[Linguistics|linguist]] by profession, are recruited by the mysterious Jago Jalo for an expedition. Jalo, a human who more than a thousand years ago embarked on a [[Relativistic rocket|relativistic journey]] has made a stunning discovery: a [[flat Earth]]. However, when the team rendezvous on the Kung homeworld, the violent Jalo unexpectedly has a [[Myocardial infarction|heart attack]] and dies. Shocked by the large amounts of weapons on-board Jalo's [[Spacecraft|spaceship]], Kin has misgivings about the expedition, but Silver and Marco see the possibility of reaping great technological rewards and launch the vessel. When the expedition finally arrives at Jalo's pre-programmed coordinates, they find a flattened version of the medieval [[Old World|Eastern hemisphere]] of Earth, clearly artificial. It rotates around its hub inside a gigantic hollow sphere with tiny "stars" affixed to the interior, complete with a small sun, moon and fake planets [[Geocentric model|revolving around it]].
+All planets built by the Company are carefully crafted with artificial strata containing synthetic fossils, indistinguishable from the real thing. On occasion, however, mischievous Company employees attempt to place anomalous objects in the strata as practical jokes, like running shoes and other [[out-of-place artifact]]s, hoping to raise confusion among future archaeologists when the planets' beginnings have been long forgotten. However the Company forbids this, and secretly monitors the generated strata in order to detect embedded jokes, fearing such actions may cause the collapse of entire civilizations when the artifacts are eventually unearthed.<ref name=Pratchett-1988/>{{rp|page=&nbsp;14–15}}
-After their ship is hit by one of the orbiting "planets", Kin, Marco and Silver are forced to abandon ship and land on the flat Earth with the help of their ''lift-belt'' equipped [[space suit|suits]]. A return from the flat Earth now seems impossible, unless they are able to find its mysterious builders, so they embark on a journey to a structure they have spotted at the hub of the Disc, the only thing which does not match geographically with the Earth they know. En route, they encounter the superstitious [[Middle Ages|Medieval]] inhabitants of the Disc, who believe the [[eschatology|end of the world]] is near, due to increasingly chaotic climate (caused by the Disc's machinery breaking down), the recent disappearance of one of their planets and the general devastation caused by the ship's crash. They also discover a number of other differences. What Kin Arad knows as [[Romulus and Remus|Reme]] is called [[Rome]] on the Disc, and there is a strange ''[[christianity|Christos cult]]'' that is completely unfamiliar to Kin Arad. Also, [[Venus]] is conspicuously lacking its giant (lunar-sized) [[Neith (hypothetical moon)|moon]] ''Adonis'', which dominates the sunset sky on the Earth Kin knows, and led humanity to a [[Heliocentrism|heliocentric]] [[world view]] early on.<ref>Terry Pratchett, ''Strata'' (Corgi Books, 1988), 130-131</ref> Since only the Eastern hemisphere of Earth is represented, the continent of [[Americas|America]] is completely missing; the travellers rescue a party of [[Viking]]s in the process of searching for [[Vinland]], when their ship is about to sail over the edge of the world.
+Kin and two aliens are recruited by the mysterious Jago Jalo to join an expedition. One alien is a [[Paranoia|paranoid]], four-armed, [[frog]]-like, [[Muscle|muscular]] "kung" named Marco. The other alien is a [[bear]]-like "shand", [[historian]] and [[Linguistics|linguist]] nicknamed Silver. Jago Jalo is a human who returned from a [[Relativistic rocket|relativistic journey]] he embarked on more than a thousand years ago, where he made a stunning discovery: A [[flat Earth]].
-In addition, there are real "magical" creatures and objects on the Disc, demons and magic purses and flying carpets – all of them, the travellers realise, highly advanced and sophisticated technological constructs like the Disc itself. Indeed, the world itself is an extremely old and sophisticated automated system. At the very end of the story, Kin comes to suspect that the builders of the flat world in fact constructed the universe as a whole, with the evidence of previous races being hoaxes and the flat world being an inside joke, analogous to the false strata Kin and the Company themselves manufacture, and the occasional hoaxes put in these strata by rebellious employees.
+When the team rendezvous with Jago Jalo on the kung homeworld, the violent Jalo unexpectedly has a [[Myocardial infarction|heart attack]] and dies. Kin Arad is shocked by the large store of weapons on-board Jalo's [[Spacecraft|spaceship]], and has misgivings about the expedition; Silver and Marco, however, see the possibility of reaping great technological rewards and launch the vessel on autopilot.
-Kin and the others eventually reach the hub and Kin makes contact with the Disc's controlling systems. She is told that, despite advanced robotic maintenance, sheer [[entropy]] build-up threatens the Disc's further existence. The machines offer their advanced technology, in exchange for Kin's construction of a real replacement Earth for the flat planet's inhabitants. Kin agrees; the implication being that the world she will build is in fact our own [[Earth]]. Kin is excited about the massive task at hand; just like ''[[Ringworld]]''{{'}}s [[Louis Wu]], whom she parallels, she is over two hundred years old, and thus constantly in danger of growing tired of life.
+When the expedition arrives at Jalo's pre-programmed coordinates, they find a flattened version of the medieval [[Old World|Eastern hemisphere]] of the Earth they had originally departed from, before their disturbing rendezvous with Jalo. Clearly artificial, the disc rotates around its hub, and is contained inside a gigantic hollow sphere with tiny artificial "stars" affixed to the interior, augmented with a small meandering artificial sun, moon, and fake planets [[Geocentric model|revolving around it]].
+Their ship is hit by one of the "planets" wandering on the interior of the sphere, so Kin, Marco, and Silver are forced to abandon ship. They land on the flat planet with the help of their "lift-belt" equipped [[space suit|suits]], while their ship crashes. A return from the flat world now seems impossible, but hoping for assistance from the disc's mysterious builders, Kin, Marco, and Silver set off towards a structure they had spotted at the disc's hub. It is the only thing on the flat "Earth" which does not match the geography of the spherical Earth they left.
+En route, the team encounter the superstitious [[Middle Ages|Medieval]] inhabitants of the disc, who believe the [[eschatology|end of the world]] is near, due to increasingly chaotic climate (caused by the disc's machinery breaking down), the recent disappearance of one of their planets, and the general devastation caused by the ship's crash. The three travelers also discover a number of other differences.
+What Kin Arad knows as [[Romulus and Remus|"Reme"]] is called "[[Rome]]" on the disc, and there is a strange [[christianity|"Christos cult"]] that is completely unfamiliar to Kin. Also, [[Venus]] is conspicuously lacking its giant (lunar-sized) [[Neith (hypothetical moon)|moon "Adonis"]], which dominates the sunset sky on the Earth Kin Arad came from, which was formative in leading humanity to an early [[Heliocentrism|heliocentric]] [[world view]].<ref name=Pratchett-1988/>{{rp|page=&nbsp;130–131}}
+Since only the Eastern hemisphere of Earth is represented, the continent of [[Americas|America]] is completely missing, so Kin, Marco, and Silver rescue a party of [[Viking]]s in the process of searching for [[Vinland]], when their ship is about to sail over the edge of the world.
+The flat world is apparently an extremely old and sophisticated automated system. In addition, there are real magical creatures and objects on the disc – Demons, and magic purses, and flying carpets – all of which, the travelers deduce, are themselves highly advanced, sophisticated technological constructs, just like the disc.
+The travelers eventually reach the structure at the hub and make contact with the disc’s automated control-systems. They are told that (aside from the recent damage) the sheer build-up of [[entropy]] in the old machinery has exceeded the capacity of its advanced robotic maintenance. Catastrophic failure threatens the disc’s further existence. The machines offer to exchange their advanced technology for the construction of a real (spherical) planet as a refuge for the disc "Earth" inhabitants. Kin, the planetary engineer, agrees. She is excited about the massive task at hand; just like the parallel character [[Louis Wu]]  in ''[[Ringworld]]'', Kin is over two hundred years old, and in danger of becoming tired of life.
+The implication of the denouement is that the conventional planet Kin Arad will build is in fact the readers' own "[[Earth]]". By the end of the story, Kin comes to the further suspicion that the builders of the flat world constructed the whole universe. The evidence of previous races would then be hoaxes, and the flat world itself would be a prank by the universe’s construction crew – analogous to the artificial strata Kin and the Company manufacture, and the occasional prankster employees inserting hoaxes in the artificial strata.
+==Interpretation==
+The history of the protagonists' home-planet "Earth" in ''Strata'' unfolded very differently from the readers' Earth:
+* [[North America]] is named [[Valhalla]], and [[Norse colonization of North America|was colonised]] in the first millennium A.D. by Vikings, led by [[Leif Ericson]];
+* the [[Roman Empire]] is known as Reme instead, after the other twin in the story of [[Romulus and Remus]];
+* the planet [[Venus]] is orbited by a moon like Earth's [[Moon|Luna]]
+* none of the [[Abrahamic religions]] ever developed in its history (a mixture of [[Buddhism]] and [[folk religion]] seems to have predominated, punctuated by an assortment of flash-in-the-pan religious cults)
+* humans are much more developed in the field of [[Spaceflight|space travel]] and have met several other [[Extraterrestrial life|intelligent species]], such as the tall, frog-like kungs, and the bear-like shandi
+The book implies that the reason for the historical discrepancies is that the readers' "Earth" is actually the replacement world created by Kin Arad for the inhabitants of the malfunctioning disc "Earth", to which the protagonists of the book travel early in the story. While the history and features of the flat "Earth" in ''Strata'' clearly is not the one we are familiar with, the history of the flat Earth is consistent with our own, up to the point where the expedition arrives.
+Humanity appears to be merely the latest of a long series of intelligent species who have evolved, altered the universe to better suit themselves, and then died out before the next species arose and started the cycle all over again. Before humans, there were the ''Great Spindle Kings'', a race of acutely claustrophobic [[Telepathy|telepaths]], who could live only a few hundred per planet and therefore built entire worlds from scratch to accommodate their population. Before them were the Wheelers, who were themselves preceded by increasingly alien races extending all the way back to the [[Big Bang]].
+All of what is known about the intelligent species who have lived before humans is revealed to be incorrect near the end of the book, when the Disc's computer system (built by the universe's actual creators) reveals to Kin that the entire universe is only 70,000&nbsp;years old and that evidence and remains of long dead civilizations were fabricated by the universe's creators to make the universe appear older than it is (much like the Company-fabricated prehistoric fossils on their created worlds to make them appear older than they really were). Finally, the fact that the computer systems on the disc "Earth" need humans, implies that the universe was itself created by humans as a place for themselves to live.
 ==Translations==
@@ Line 44: / Line 75: @@
 * ''Dysk'' (Polish) (first edition was entitled "Warstwy Wszechświata", Polish for "Layers of the Universe"; "Strata" means "loss" in Polish)
 * ''Страта'' (Russian)
+==References==
+{{Reflist}}
 ==External links==
@@ Line 49: / Line 83: @@
 * [http://www.lspace.org/books/pqf/strata.html Quotations from ''Strata'']
 *{{Isfdb title|id=979}}
-==References==
-{{reflist}}
 {{Terry Pratchett}}
+{{Authority control}}
 [[Category:1981 British novels]]
@@ Line 60: / Line 92: @@
 [[Category:Comic science fiction novels]]
 [[Category:Novels by Terry Pratchett]]
+[[Category:Fiction about xenoarchaeology]]