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A Collegiate Casting-Out of Devilish Devices

A Collegiate Casting-Out of Devilish Devices

Short storyFantasyHigh Fantasy
Pages
6
Published
2005
Language
English

Synopsis

The wizards of Unseen University face a threat unlike any they have encountered before: an inspection. The Patrician, Lord Vetinari, has appointed the meticulous A. E. Pessimal as the city's first Inspector of Universities, and the Faculty Council — chaired by Archchancellor Mustrum Ridcully, with Ponder Stibbons relaying the demands — must account for what exactly its wizards do: their teaching, their research output, their expenditure, all while waiting for the tea and chocolate biscuits to arrive. A short comic piece of Discworld satire aimed squarely at academic bureaucracy, first published in the Times Higher Education Supplement on 13 May 2005 and later collected in A Blink of the Screen (2012).

Prose complexity
5/10

Vibe

FunnySatiricalWhimsical
Rivals

Genres

Fantasy High Fantasy Humor Satire Short Stories

About the author

T
Terry Pratchett

Terry Pratchett (1948–2015) was an English author best known for the Discworld series, a sequence of forty-one comic fantasy novels set on a flat world carried through space on the backs of four elephants standing on a giant turtle. Across four decades, the Discworld grew from a parody of sword-and-sorcery fantasy into one of the most sustained works of social satire in English literature, examining politics, religion, science, gender, race, capitalism, and the nature of stories themselves. Pra...

Characters

Ponder StibbonsSupporting

Head of Inadvisably Applied Magic and Praelector of Unseen University; relays the Inspector of Universities' demands to the Faculty Council.

All characters in A Collegiate Casting-Out of Devilish Devices

Frequently asked questions

  • What is A Collegiate Casting-Out of Devilish Devices?

    A short comic piece set at Unseen University in which the wizards are subjected to inspection by the Patrician's newly appointed Inspector of Universities, A. E. Pessimal — a parody of UK academic bureaucracy and research assessment. First published in the Times Higher Education Supplement on 13 May 2005, and later collected in A Blink of the Screen (2012).

  • Is this a Discworld story?

    Yes — it is set at Unseen University with the Discworld wizards, though it is a short piece rather than a novel.

  • What does the title mean?

    The title parodies the formal language of institutional documents and assessments — specifically the kind of bureaucratic process phrase that sounds pompous but means something entirely mundane. In this case, the 'Devilish Devices' are the mechanisms of institutional evaluation itself.