I feel the pressure of the future and in this turning world must either kill it or become its master.

And the people of Ankh-Morpork are so thirsty for novelty that the whole city is, you might say, hurrying the future along for the sheer joy of watching its progress.

The rising sun managed to peek around the vast column of smoke that forever rose from Ankh-Morpork, City of Cities, illustrating almost up to the edge of space that smoke means progress or, at least, people setting fire to things.

However much we disdain the word “politics”, one of its most useful aspects is the stopping of bloodshed. Oh yes, bloodshed there will be. But the generations stream away and people change and things thought of as totally impossible suddenly turn out to be everyday.

Then the Dean repeated the mantra that has had such a marked effect on the progress of knowledge throughout the ages.“Why don’t we just mix up absolutely everything and see what happens?” he said.And Ridcully responded with the traditional response.“It’s got to be worth a try,” he said.

He looked at her defiantly, and she thought: and so one at a time we all become human—human werewolves, human dwarfs, human trolls …the melting pot melts in one direction only, and so we make progress.