To the consternation of the patrician, Lord Vetinari, a new invention has arrived in Ankh-Morpork - a great clanging monster of a machine that harnesses the power of all of the elements: earth, air, fire and water. This being Ankh-Morpork, it's soon drawing astonished crowds, some of whom caught the zeitgeist early and arrive armed with notepads and very sensible rainwear.
Moist von Lipwig is not a man who enjoys hard work - as master of the Post Office, the Mint and the Royal Bank his input is, of course, vital... but largely dependent on words, which are fortunately not very heavy and don't always need greasing. However, he does enjoy being alive, which makes a new job offer from Vetinari hard to refuse...
Steam is rising over Discworld, driven by Mister Simnel, the man wi' t'flat cap and sliding rule who has an interesting arrangement with the sine and cosine. Moist will have to grapple with gallons of grease, goblins, a fat controller with a history of throwing employees down the stairs and some very angry dwarfs if he's going to stop it all going off the rails...
QuoteThe villains of the storybook had found their place in society, at last. All it needed was technology.
The Doubleday hardback features an expanded two page map of the Central Sea region on pp8-9, (or at least of its Hubwards side), which provides a lot of interesting detail as to locations of places previously only hinted at or else vaguely located. The map covers the region Quirm-Ankh-Morpork - Scrote - Überwald - Lancre with The Chalk, Sheepridge and the Octarine Grass Country shading in. No indication of scale is given, save for the incidental detail in the text that the completed railway line from Ankh-Morpork to Überwald is 1,200 miles long.
The Doubleday hardback special edition exclusive to the retailer WHSmith contained an additional extra short story Humphrey Newt's Thunderbolt Carriage.
