15A - Small Gods, Part 1: Consider the Tortoise

The first episode on Terry Pratchett's thirteenth (and best) Discworld novel Small Gods (1992), looking at religious and folkloric depictions of tortoises, the idea that gods need belief to survive as a trope of fantasy literature through influential works like those of Fritz Leiber and the Epic of Gilgamesh, as well as the early Dungeons and Dragons handbooks, the use of explicitly religious language in fantasy, comparisons to Philip Pulman's His Dark Materials series and, finally, an examination of religious animal ethics.