This is Stuff You Like, you can call me Ursa, and we've hit a Patreon milestone, my pretties,
oh yes!
Last time that meant terrible greenscreening and singing.
And dancing like you’re in the Anglican Church.
This time though, we’re going to talk about Good Omens.
Because c’mon, Angel.
What else would you review for your $666 milestone?
So Good Omens: it's generally wonderful, and also a really good apocalypse story.
Good Omens is a story Lower Tadfield, the AntiChrist, and the end of the world, sort
of, and was written by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett and published in 1991.
The 1991 thing is important because it’s both an example of early-ish work of theirs,
and also because it makes a lot of jokes about car phones, tape decks, and best of Queen
albums.
There is an unabridged audio drama version, but a couple of years ago they did a radio
adaptation where they updated it to the modern day, and it was so smooth and so seamless
that you would hardly have noticed.
In the novel itself, Hell talks to Crowley through the voice of Freddie Mercury from
the Best of Queen album that all tapes turn into if you leave them in the car long enough.
In the updated version they just highjack the voice of whoever's on the radio at the
time.
"Thank you Mr Tyler, and now onto our next guest...CROWLEY!
Eh?
CROWLEY!
ARMAGGEDON HAS BEGUN!
THE INFERNAL COUNCIL NOTES THAT YOU AVOIDED THE FORCES WE EMPOWERED TO COLLECT YOU!"
It's kind of brilliant.
The plot of the book, which is what we’re talking about today, goeth thusly:
due to a bit of a mix-up, the Antichrist does not, in fact, end up in the care of the US
Cultural attache and his wife, overseen by a demon (and an angel).
Nope!
He ends with a completely normal boring English family in a little village called Lower Tadfield.
And he grows up a completely normal boy, except for the fact that he can kind of shape reality
around him.
Both the forces of Heaven and Hell want the apocalypse to happen -
except for the angel Aziraphale and angel who didn’t so much fall as Saunter Vaguely
Downward Crowley - and so Az and Crowley are trying to track
the Antichrist down, and prevent the apocalypse, along with a few other people...
Like the witch Anathema Device (with her book of nice and accurate prophecies)
and the Witchfinder Army With Shadwell and his new apprentice Newton Pulsifer.
On the other hand forces are abroad who don't really mind if the apocalypse happens-
That's what they've been waiting for, after all-
and so you've got War, Death, Famine and Pestilence... or should that be Pollution, nowadays?
All ends happily, I feel you should know.
But also...all ends ineffably, because no one really is entirely sure if this WASN'T
the Divine plan all along?
I mean you get the Metatron who is the Voice of God but I've only ever seen him in Dogma-
Snape, Snape, Metatron Snape- Regardless, it is an excellent apocalypse.
But Ursa, I hear 95% of you cry, what kind of apocalypse is that, the world didn't even
end or anything!
There aren’t even motorcycle gangs with punk hairdos!
Well first of all there's a very small motorcycle gang who may or may not have punk hairdos.
Plus, as the 5% of you who have watched Plus Points know...that’s not exactly what the
apocalyptic genre is about.
Or at least...that’s not what it used to be about.
Apocalypse is about things which are hidden, veiled, soon to happen.
Apocalyptic literature is about revealing those things which are currently hidden, or
soon to happen, and making some kind of sense of them.
The fact that it does this through masses of bonkers-sounding symbolism is a feature
not a bug...honest.
[shifty expression]
OK, but how does that make Good Omens great apocalyptic literature?
Well, because it’s a revelation.
It's just a humanist one.
What is revealed by the actions of Adam and the Them and everyone else, is that free will
has to be a thing, and that people need to be better to each
other and that people need to sort out problems
before they die rather than assuming it'll get sorted out afterwards.
And that supernatural interference to save the whales will just end up with a bunch more
dead whales later, and really, it's just better for humanity that they know that if you kill
a whale, you end up with a dead whale.
That last one makes sense in context, honest.
Adam is able to shape reality to his liking, but because he grows up with loving parents
in a positive environment, the world he shapes is Lower Tadfield,
with its crisp autumns and hot summers and snow every Christmas,
a place where no motorway will intrude nor supermarket chain sully.
Adam's fall from grace is when he discovers, via Anathema and her hippy magazines, that
the world outside of Lower Tadfield is full of really horrible things as well as nice
ones.
Nuclear waste.
And dead whales.
And the realities of nuclear waste and dead whales upset him so much that it nearly kicks
off the end of the world.
But when he decides that the world should just...end, and he can make it over into a
better place, and he's dividing up the world among his friends,
they ask him which bit he's going to get:
"You've divided up the world, right?
So what bit are you gonna have?"
"I'll have Tadfield."
"Eh?"
"Tadfield?"
"And Lower Tadfield.
And Norton.
And Norton Woods."
"Is that all?"
"They're all I've ever wanted."
Because he’s a child, and a very, very human one at that.
When we hit our Patreon milestone I asked everyone “why is it that you love Good Omens?
And why does it get dropped in the bath so much?”
You loved a lot of things about Good Omens.
You loved Az and Crowley, you loved the way the two authors’ styles
interacted, you loved the footnotes,
you loved Famine, you loved the British sense of humour,
you loved the positivity and the fact that the world and humanity were considered worth
saving, and you loved Az and Crowley.
I know I said them twice, but you really really loved Az and Crowley.
A couple of people really liked how the book poked fun at Christian end times theology,
and you know, I’m not terribley keen on that whole future-literalist reading of Revelation
either so I get that.
But what surprised me most about Good Omens was its...respect for the source material.
Because it pokes fun at Biblical literalism and symbolism-heavy future-telling using Revelation-
but it also takes place in a world where all of these things could be literally true.
I mean, it starts with the literal Adam and Eve in the literal Garden of Eden and the
literal angel with the flaming sword.
It takes place in a world where Death, and War and Famine and Pestilence as...archetypes...
really exist.
And yet they, and the Devil, and the end of the world itself, are defeated by humans and
their humanness.
And that focus on humanity and the worth of humanity is, in one person’s opinion, why
it keeps getting dropped in the bath so much.
It’s comfort reading.
It’s funny and familiar and tells you that for all of the disasters and horrors that
we inflict upon each other, humanity is worth saving.
We are worth saving.
And that belief in the goodness of humanity shines through the book, and makes us feel
all warm and fuzzy inside.
And I think that’s beautiful.
Did I mention that you also loved the shipping?
You know what, I don’t think we talked about that enough.
So come back in a fortnight where we're going to talk about Az and Crowley and shipping
and why they are so popular and all that jazz.
Anyway, that's all for this episode, so like, share, subscribe, Patreon, and I will see
you all in a couple of weeks!