Why doesn't Terry Pratchett write about orcs?

Question

I've not read too many of his recent books, so maybe orcs pop up there... but it struck me recently that orcs don't really feature in the discworld setting at all. Trolls, yes... Werewolves, yes... Witches, dragons, zombies, vampires, dwarves and elves, yes yes yes... and wizards, of course... about every fantasy staple there is, but no orcs- why is that?

Answer 1

Orcs are not an invention of J R R Tolkien. They are a fantasy staple to be reinvented over and over. Generally Orcs are considered to be a kin to Ogres or Trolls. However, Pratchett's Trolls are more like some sort of silicone ( or water) elemental than conventional trolls. Personally, I think we don't see orcs in discworld because they keep mostly to themselves hiding in only the deepest darkest forests. Somewhere on Discworld, an orc child is asking his mother if humans are real. She quietly assures him that they are not, now go to sleep, the sun is almost up and we'll have no more talk of foolish human-tales

Answer 2

Several reasons, a couple already touched on:

Orcs, at least the ones you're thinking of, were created by Tolkien specifically for his tales of Middle Earth--orcs were created by Sauron, essentially by perverting Elven biology; in order to create a race of evil warrior-types. Since Sauron doesn't have any place in the Discworld, neither do the orcs.

Terry Pratchett's view of Elves is a very dark one, as you may recall--in the Discworld, they are the heartless, immortal, magical, child-stealing foes of mortal-kind and an enemy not to be trifled with---they don't even live on the Discworld, per se, but on a different plane of nasty existence. Orcs would just not fit into the picture, given their origin.

Finally, the Discworld is essentially a comic creation, inhabited by all-too-human beings, regardless of race. Again, Orcs were not created for satire, but for terror and war.

Let the orcs live and die in Middle Earth.

Answer 3

All the others are widespread in mythology, but orcs, as far as I know, are specific to Tolkien's middle earth. No ents are to be found on discworld, either, though there is one early brief aside which mentions trees with sentience.

Another reason might be that almost all of Pratchett's protagonists, individually or as groups, tend to have thoughts and motivations (exception: creatures of the dungeon dimensions?) and are not simply "baddies" to be hewn down.

The dedication to "Guards! Guards!" makes it quite clear how Terry feels about that sort of thing.

"They may be called the Palace Guard, the City Guard, or the Patrol. Whatever their name, their purpose in any work of heroic fantasy is identical: it is, round about Chapter Three (or ten minutes into the film) to rush into the room, attack the hero one at a time, and be slaughtered. No-one ever asks them if they wanted to.
This book is dedicated to those fine men."

Answer 4

Your question is very much a literary one. Why doesn't he write about Orcs. Maybe he will in future works, but it is the author's discretion to write what ever he wants. An orc as a main character would be interesting against all the cliched fantasy novels out there.

Answer 5

Why would he want to use another author's creation? Orcs were invented by Tolkien, they are not general mythological fantasy creatures.
Your question is like asking why Harry Potter doesn't visit Discworld.

Answer 6

From the Encyclopaedia of Arda

Orcs
Warring servants of the Dark Lords
Meaning Derives from Old English, 'demons' (but see The Etymology of 'Orc' below)
Other Names Goblins, Glamhoth, Yrch

Little is known for certain of the beginnings of the Orcs, the footsoldiers of the Enemy. It is said that they were in origin corrupted Elves captured by Melkor before the beginning of the First Age. In appearance, Orcs were squat, swarthy creatures. Most of them preferred the darkness, being blinded by the light of the Sun, but the kinds bred later in the Third Age such as the Uruk-hai could endure the daylight.

The Etymology of ‘Orc’
'...the word is as far as I am concerned actually derived from Old English orc 'demon', but only because of its phonetic suitability...'
The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien No 144, dated 1953
The word orc could be called the Tom Bombadil of Tolkien's etymology; it occurs in different variants in almost all the languages of Middle-earth, but we have almost no details of how they interconnect. The variety of 'orc'-words is illustrated by Tolkien himself:

'Orc is the form of the name that other races had for this foul people as it was in the language of Rohan. In Sindarin it was orch. Related, no doubt, was the word uruk in the Black Speech...'
The Lord of the Rings
Appendix F I The Languages and Peoples of the Third Age
So it is clear that these words are all related (and orc is also, apparently, used freely by speakers of the Common Tongue). What is harder to discover, though, is how these words are all related to one another. Why does the rural hobbit-dialect use essentially the same word for these creatures as in the courts of Minas Tirith or Caras Galadhon? When it comes to the word's origins, there are three possible theories.

Theory 1: Ancient Mannish Tongues
The connection of orc to Old English strongly suggests a Mannish origin. Other old words of this kind, like mathom and smial, have their origins in the ancient tongues of the Northmen (hence the shared understanding between the Hobbits and Rohirrim, whose ancestors had once lived in the same northern regions). This language can be traced back to the ancestors of the Edain in the First Age, from whose language also came the Adûnaic tongue of Númenor and ultimately the Common Speech of Middle-earth.

This puts the first pieces of the puzzle into place. If the word orc is shared by the language of the Rohirrim, the dialect of the Hobbits and the Westron tongue, it must date back at least to these ancient ancestors of Men. However, orc surely cannot have been invented by these Mannish-speakers. They came late onto a linguistic scene in which Sindarin was already well established. At the time the Elves encountered Men, they had been warring with the Orcs for centuries - it is not plausible that they would have abandoned their own word for their foe and replaced it with one from a coarse alien tongue. The only realistic alternative is that the earliest Men did not invent the word orc for themselves, but adapted it from Elvish orch, and then passed it down to their descendants. This accounts for Tolkien's qualification '..but only because of its phonetic suitability...' quoted above.

Theory 2: Orkish Dialects
An apparently more practical theory might be that the Orcs invented their own name for themselves, and the other races (especially the Elves) adopted this for their own use. Unfortunately, this doesn't fit with the established facts:

'It is said that [the Orcs] had no language of their own, but took what they could of other tongues and perverted it to their own liking...'
The Lord of the Rings
Appendix F I The Languages and Peoples of the Third Age
This seems to suggest that the Orcs didn't originally have a name for their own kind, but borrowed it from some other source. This is a strange conclusion to be sure, but it seems the only one discernable from the text. We would have to presume that this acquired name was then incorporated into Sauron's Black Speech when it was created long after. If the Orcs didn't invent their own word uruk, then, it must have come from some other source.

Theory 3: Elvish
The only remaining plausible theory is that it was the Elves who invented the word, and passed it on to the other races, including the Orcs themselves. This is borne out by The Etymologies (in volume 5 of The History of Middle-earth), where we find a reference to an Elvish root órok, from which the various Elvish words for 'goblin' derive. This seems to be the oldest origin of the word, from which all the others developed


If you want to read more about orcs try "Grunts" by Mary Gentle. The orcs are the heroes of the story or perhaps anti-heroes would be more correct - they are still very nasty but you do get to sympathise with their hatred of being used as cannonfodder by every Dark Lord that pops up.
Not as rib tickling as Pratchett but a good satire.

Answer 7

i'm a brilliant Discworld fan and enjoyed "getting money," it rather is a continuation of "Going Postal," yet i could no longer rather shake the sensation that Terry Pratchett wrote this recent installment on computerized, in the different case have been given a golem to write down it for him. all of the excellent characters are blanketed---some like loss of existence in cameo roles, and others like Lord Vetinari, almost too seen (somewhat of Ankh-Morpork's Patrician is going a protracted way). that's have been given all of the excellent status, falling, and knocking-human beings-down-with-ladders jokes, plus Punes, or performs on words. t

Answer 8

Maybe he has not got around to it yet, or maybe the Orc does not exist on Discworld?

Answer 9

Because, along with several other names for creatures, orcs are covered by copyright!

Answer 10

Guess he doesn't have a place for them. Why not go on his author website, and ask him yourself? Because unless Terry Pratchett is sat at his pc bored, and clicks on yahoo answers, you will never know the true answer. So visit his site and ask him.

http://www.terrypratchettbooks.com/

http://www.contemporarywriters.com/authors/?p=auth03C12L372912635183

http://www.meettheauthor.co.uk/bookbites/search.cfm?letter=P&order=3