The Last Continent (1998)
The Last Continent is a 1998 fiction book written by Terry Pratchett.
Rincewind, the Disc's least competent wizard, washes up on Fourecks, a red and dusty continent where it never rains and the wildlife would cheerfully kill you for sport. Back at Unseen University, a professor has gone missing, and a search party of elderly, bickering senior wizards sets off to find him, blundering across time and geography along the way. Terry Pratchett's twenty-second Discworld novel turns Australia into one long running joke: warm beer, thongs, bushrangers, a talking kangaroo, and the strange business of what happens when the rivers finally fill with water.
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The Last Continent in our writing
- Companion guide: Discworld: The Complete Guide to Terry Pratchett's Flat Planet
A few thoughts on The Last Continent
Fans of Terry Pratchett's deadpan absurdity should track down the 1995 Discworld point-and-click game, which runs Rincewind through the same slapstick logic. For the sunburnt outback lunacy the book keeps ribbing, Crocodile Dundee and the Mad Max films are the exact targets of its parody, worth a rewatch to catch every joke.
Terry Pratchett adaptations worth trying after the books
The Last Continent sits deep in the Discworld run, and the screen versions start earlier. The Colour of Magic follows the same Rincewind who washes up on Fourecks. Going Postal and The Watch take the Ankh-Morpork end of the map. The 1995 point-and-click game gets the deadpan timing right, and Good Omens shows Pratchett writing outside the Disc.
Discworld books that hand the plot to the Unseen University wizards
Half of The Last Continent belongs to the senior wizards of Unseen University, bickering their way across time and geography while Rincewind sweats in Fourecks. These books give the faculty the same amount of rope. Eric puts Rincewind through a demonology mishap, Unseen Academicals drags Ridcully onto a football pitch, and The Globe sets the wizards loose on our own world.
Fantasy that plays the whole genre for laughs
Pratchett builds The Last Continent out of jokes about genre furniture: a wizard who cannot cast, a continent running on beer and bad luck, magic misfiring on cue. These pick at fantasy the same way. The Portable Door sends office temps into goblin bureaucracy, Slayers Premium turns a sorceress loose on a seafood curse, and Union of Gnomes runs a labour dispute through a dungeon.
Stranded somewhere the wildlife holds a grudge
Rincewind lands on Fourecks with no map, no water and a talking kangaroo for a guide, and the continent treats him as an intruder. These drop their characters somewhere just as unwelcoming. Mad Max and Crocodile Dundee both mine the real Australian bush, Nowhere Boys strands four teenagers in a parallel town, and Sliders keeps its travellers one wrong jump from disaster.