By Terry Pratchett
Tiny nomes flee a doomed department store
Subject
Themes
Masklin is four inches tall, the sole hunter and provider for the last ten nomes in existence, eight of them elderly. Their habitat beside a motorway has been systematically destroyed, and they survive on scraps and the occasional rat. After a fox attack kills two of their number, Masklin loads everyone onto a lorry using ropes and grapnels, nearly dying to retrieve the Thing, a mysterious black cube the tribe has carried for generations.
Masklin is four inches tall, the sole hunter and provider for the last ten nomes in existence, eight of them elderly. Their habitat beside a motorway has been systematically destroyed, and they survive on scraps and the occasional rat. After a fox attack kills two of their number, Masklin loads…
Truckers was published in 1989 as the first volume of the Bromeliad trilogy (followed by Diggers and Wings), and it arrived at a distinctive moment in Terry Pratchett's career. He was already well established through the Discworld series, which had begun in 1983, but the Bromeliad represented…
Masklin's realisation that "there's things we can't think because we don't know the words" sits at the heart of the story's intellectual concerns. It surfaces early, when he watches humans through a crack and wants to ask whether they might be intelligent, but cannot frame the question because the…
Arnold Bros (est. 1905) is a department store founder who has been elevated into a deity. The nomes have constructed an entire theology around him: The Book of Nome reads like Genesis, complete with numbered verses; the signs in the Store are sacred scripture requiring priestly interpretation;…
Masklin's approach to impossible problems is the story's most practical lesson. He learns it not from books or the Thing but from dragging rats across fields. An impossible task is not actually impossible; it is simply a collection of very difficult tasks bundled together. If you cannot drag a rat…
The physical reality of being four inches tall shapes every aspect of nome existence. A waste-bin is a hunting ground. An apple core is a significant food find. A rat is both predator and prey, a week's worth of meat if you can kill it and drag it home. A fox is a disaster on four legs. Rain is not…
Nobody in the story wants to lead. Masklin does not want to be in charge; the Abbot did not want to be Abbot; Gurder does not want to succeed him. This reluctance is presented not as a weakness but as the essential qualification. "You don't want to be one," the Abbot tells Masklin. "That's what I…
Masklin is four inches tall, stocky as a brick wall, and tougher than old boots. He has spent his life as the sole provider for a dwindling tribe of nomes, hunting rats across fields, dragging food home through hawk-infested territory, and listening to elderly nomes complain about the quality of his…
Grimma is nearly three years old when the story begins, which for a nome whose years feel like decades makes her still young but prematurely worn. She has spent her life washing, tidying, cooking, and chasing after the elderly nomes in the tribe, doing the invisible domestic work that keeps everyone…
Gurder is young, plump, curly-haired, and permanently worried. As the Abbot's assistant, he is the nome who does all the things the Abbot cannot do himself, which increasingly means confronting realities the Abbot will not publicly acknowledge. He is the first Stationeri to approach the outsiders…
Dorcas del Icatessen is an elderly, stocky inventor who wears a huge apron with pockets bulging with mysterious tools and keeps a pencil lead permanently behind one ear. He is the Store's only true scientist: a nome who watches humans as a hobby, tinkering with electricity and trying to understand…
Angalo de Haberdasheri is the Duke's son, brightly dressed in rainbow colours with a belt studded with glass and a feather in his hat, and he is the first Store nome to welcome the outsiders. He owns a pet rat called Bobo, which he has trained and leads on a leather strap. He is rude, arrogant, and…
Granny Morkie is the unofficial power behind old Torrit's leadership. She tells him to shut up, orders him about, and makes every significant decision while insisting loudly that he is the leader. She survived the Great Winter of 1986 and considers this qualification enough for any challenge the…
Masklin crouches in a waste-bin at a lorry park, four inches tall, wet, cold, and responsible for the last ten nomes in existence. Eight of them are elderly. Their habitat beside a motorway has been systematically destroyed: hedges grubbed up, streams piped underground, the corners of the world…
Lost and departmentless under the floorboards, the tribe watches through a crack as the Store opens and thousands of humans mill about. Torrit dismisses them as basically just indigenous, like magpies, but Masklin privately wonders: if humans are so stupid, why is it the nomes who are hiding? He…
Gurder leads the group back to the Abbot for a secret, unofficial meeting. This time, the ancient nome turns around and speaks directly to Masklin, casually acknowledging his existence. Ten minutes earlier he had denied the outsiders were real. The Abbot explains the distinction: that was official.…
Grimma insists on joining the expedition to Consumer Accounts, overriding Gurder's objection that girls should not go anywhere dangerous. They ride Dorcas's lift to Kiddies Klothes, pass through the territory of the mystical, yoghurt-eating Klothians, and reach the escalator. Grimma simply runs onto…
The reading programme produces ideas, though not always useful ones. Young Vinto Pimmie proposes threatening a human driver with a "gnu," having confused the word with "gun" in a book about hostages. The Thing helpfully defines the gnu as an African antelope weighing up to 270 kilograms. No Pet…
Silence arrives when there should be noise. The Store does not open. After several hours of telling one another not to worry, nomes risk a glance above the floorboards and find empty counters, stripped shelves, and humans packing the remaining stock into boxes. Carpets are rolled up. Floorboards are…
The lorry careens through Grimethorpe, smashing shop windows, mounting pavements, and knocking down street lights. Angalo steers by pulling threads tied to the rope-team leaders' arms. Grimma reads The Highway Code aloud while Masklin shouts warnings. The signaller does not have a flag signal for…
Masklin is four inches tall, stocky as a brick wall, and tougher than old boots. He has spent his life as the sole provider for a dwindling tribe of nomes, hunting rats across fields, dragging food home through hawk-infested territory, and listening to elderly nomes complain about the quality of his…
Grimma is nearly three years old when the story begins, which for a nome whose years feel like decades makes her still young but prematurely worn. She has spent her life washing, tidying, cooking, and chasing after the elderly nomes in the tribe, doing the invisible domestic work that keeps everyone…
Gurder is young, plump, curly-haired, and permanently worried. As the Abbot's assistant, he is the nome who does all the things the Abbot cannot do himself, which increasingly means confronting realities the Abbot will not publicly acknowledge. He is the first Stationeri to approach the outsiders…
Dorcas del Icatessen is an elderly, stocky inventor who wears a huge apron with pockets bulging with mysterious tools and keeps a pencil lead permanently behind one ear. He is the Store's only true scientist: a nome who watches humans as a hobby, tinkering with electricity and trying to understand…
Angalo de Haberdasheri is the Duke's son, brightly dressed in rainbow colours with a belt studded with glass and a feather in his hat, and he is the first Store nome to welcome the outsiders. He owns a pet rat called Bobo, which he has trained and leads on a leather strap. He is rude, arrogant, and…
Granny Morkie is the unofficial power behind old Torrit's leadership. She tells him to shut up, orders him about, and makes every significant decision while insisting loudly that he is the leader. She survived the Great Winter of 1986 and considers this qualification enough for any challenge the…
By Terry Pratchett
Subject
Themes
Masklin is four inches tall, the sole hunter and provider for the last ten nomes in existence, eight of them elderly. Their habitat beside a motorway has been systematically destroyed, and they survive on scraps and the occasional rat. After a fox attack kills two of their number, Masklin loads everyone onto a lorry using ropes and grapnels, nearly dying to retrieve the Thing, a mysterious black cube the tribe has carried for generations.