The noun trilogy
The Nome Trilogy (also: The Battle of the noun ., English Original title: "The Nome Trilogy", including: "The Bromeliad Trilogy") is a fantasy - novel series of British author Terry Pratchett . It consists of the parts Trucker (English: "Truckers", published 1989; German 1992), Wühler (English: "Diggers", published 1990; German 1992) and Flügel (English: "Wings", published 1990) ; German 1992). The series has been translated into 18 languages so far, the German version is by Andreas Brandhorst .
The trilogy tells the story of the “Nomen”, a people of tiny gnomes of extraterrestrial origin, who, scattered in isolated groups, live hidden among people, but after thousands of years on earth no longer know their own origin.
action
Nouns are almost ten centimeters tall gnomes who live in small, isolated groups around the world. The nouns have lived among people for so long that (also because of their average life expectancy of only about ten years) the knowledge of their own extraterrestrial origin has been lost over time. The trilogy describes how by chance two, later several groups find each other and learn about their history with the help of a computer that one of the groups venerated as a sacred object, but never recognized it as a computer, let alone used it.
Truckers
The young Nome Masklin lives with his girlfriend Grimma and a few other Nouns in the forest on a motorway . The originally large stem of the noun has shrunk over the years due to increasing food shortages. The story begins with Masklin, for whom it is becoming increasingly difficult to find enough food for everyone, persuades the remaining, mostly very elderly group members to sneak into a truck at a nearby gas station in order to be stowaways away from the highway to travel to a new living space. The only thing they have in their luggage is “Das Ding”, a small, apparently useless black cube that has always been in the tribe's possession and has a kind of cultic meaning, especially for the older nouns.
They take a truck to the Arnold Bros. department store , where, to their surprise, they meet another, much larger group of nouns who live under the floorboards and have organized themselves in a city-like manner there. This group does find food in abundance in the department store, but on the other hand it considers it to be the entire existing world and even worships the founder of the department store as God. The department store nouns do not believe in “outside” as they take the advertising slogan “everything under one roof” literally, and so Masklin and his companions face the challenge of convincing them that there is a world outside the building. In fact, the department store nouns even have a kind of holy script, according to which they orient their lives, which is ultimately only a collection of advertising slogans that they have read on billboards and interpret as the “commandments” of the department store founder. ("And Arnold Bros., founded in 1905 , said: I give you this sign: If you cannot find what you are looking for, contact information. ")
In the department store “Das Ding” turns out to be the navigation computer of a spaceship called “Schwan”; Accidentally deposited next to electrical cables, it charges up and begins to speak with the nouns. The nouns learn that the "swan" had to set down its ancestors on earth many thousands of years ago because of a drive failure.
When “Das Ding” picks up a radio signal that says that Arnold Bros. is about to be demolished, the Nouns decide to get to safety by stealing one of the trucks supplying the department store. The undertaking turns out to be extremely difficult, because none of them know how a motor vehicle works and, due to their size, they can only drive it as a team, but with the help of the "thing" they manage to escape in good time. Towards the end of Truckers , the nouns start a new life in a disused quarry .
Burrower
After successfully escaping from the department store, the nouns in the quarry have settled in well. Masklin struggles with his feelings for Grimma; When he suggests that she spend the future with him, she declines on the grounds that she does not want to be restricted by a committed relationship and tries to compare it with South American poison dart frogs who spend their entire lives inside the flowers of bromeliads , without knowing anything of the world around them. (see also → alternative title )
While Masklin, together with two other nouns and the "thing", sets out to explore a nearby airport, but does not return, Grimma, who thinks the missing Masklin is dead, is confronted with the problem that the quarry is back should be opened. The nouns dare to attempt another escape from the arriving people, this time with an old excavator , which they discover in a shed belonging to the quarry, repair it and name it "Jekub" after the manufacturer's logo. The escape succeeds just as the people reach the quarry. When the people chase the excavator and the situation seems hopeless, Masklin and his companions suddenly appear in the sky with the repaired "swan" and save the nouns.
As a sign of understanding their concern, Masklin gives Grimma a bromeliad. Together, the nouns leave the earth and head towards their homeland.
wing
The events in Flügel take place parallel to those in Wühler . The nouns are accompanied by Masklin while they explore the airport and finally with the help of the "thing" reach the "swan" and make it operational again.
The nouns learned from a newspaper that Richard Arnold, grandson of the founder of the now demolished Arnold Bros. department store , is on his way to Florida to witness the launch of a new satellite . "Das Ding" explains that if it got into space with this satellite, it could make contact with the "swan", which is still in orbit , and so Masklin and two companions go in search of an airplane that they can copy Florida brings.
At a nearby airport, the "thing" connects to the computers there and finds out which flight Richard Arnold is taking to Florida. The nouns sneak aboard the plane, a Concorde , and hide in Arnold's hand luggage. Arriving in Florida, they are discovered in Richard Arnold's hotel, but are able to flee to the Everglades , where they encounter another group of previously unknown nouns. These nouns have learned to travel long distances on the back of geese and have been in contact with thousands of other noun stems around the world. With the help of the geese, Masklin and his companions reach the launch pad of the space shuttle that is supposed to take the satellite into space in good time and can bring the "thing" close enough so that it is able to copy its memory onto the shuttle's computer.
After the copying process, the "thing" has used all its energy and shuts down. Masklin knows that the "swan" will not be able to head for the earth without the "thing" and reveals itself to some people who lead it to a power source, where the "thing" is recharged and Masklin informs about it that the "swan" will soon reach earth. Masklin then asks Richard Arnold for help, who helps him escape and also tells him that his grandfather, the founder of the department store, used to suspect that there were little gnomes under the floorboards of his department store.
The three nouns get on board the swan and decide to return to the quarry to get the others. On the way they make a short detour to South America, where Masklin picks a bromeliad for Grimma. When they finally reach the quarry back in England, they see their friends on the excavator "Jekub" flee from the people and get them on board the "Schwan" (these events are already told by Wühler at the end , this time from the perspective of Masklin and his companion).
With the "swan" the nouns start their journey home, with the exception of the noun Gurder, who voluntarily stays behind with the "thing" to tell the other noun tribes on earth about the "swan" and the history of the nouns. The nouns on the "swan" promise to come back one day to pick up all the other nouns.
Alternative title
In the United States , the series appeared under the name The Bromeliad Trilogy . The name is based on the behavior of some frog species to spend their entire life within the flowers of bromeliads (English: “Bromeliad”), and thus stands metaphorically for the life of nouns in their small cosmos cut off from the outside world. The choice of the alternative title is not an arbitrary one, but comes from the fact that Pratchett lets the Nomin Grimma draw exactly this comparison in the story itself.
Another difference between the US version is the name of the excavator appearing in Wühler , which, unlike in the original version (and also in the German-speaking version), is not called "Jekub" after the English agricultural machinery manufacturer JCB , but "CAT" after its American competitor Caterpillar .
The first German-language complete edition of the three parts appeared in 1996 under the title Die Nomen-Trilogie ; since 2005 it has been published as The Battle of Nouns .
Adaptations
From Truckers exists one of the British animation studio Cosgrove Hall Films produced stop-motion film that from January to April 1992, 13 ten-minute episodes of the television station ITV aired. In 2001 Dreamworks acquired the film rights to the series, but has not presented a film adaptation to this day.
expenditure
- Pratchett, Terry : Truckers. Burrower. Wing. The noun trilogy. Heyne : Munich, 1996. ISBN 978-3-453-09873-2
- Pratchett, Terry : The Nouns. The complete saga. ivi : Munich, 2018. ISBN 978-3-492-70486-1
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ DreamWorks acquires film rights to Terry Pratchett's Bromeliad Trilogy. writenews.com of May 2, 2001 (last accessed June 19, 2014).