Book:Good Omens

Good Omens
Co-author(s)	Neil Gaiman
Illustrator(s)	{{{illustrator}}}
Publisher	Victor Gollancz
Publication date	10 May 1990
ISBN	057504800X
Pages
RRP	{{{rrp}}}
Main characters	Aziraphale Crowley Adam Young
Series	[[:Category:|]]
Annotations	View
Notes
All data relates to the first UK edition.

Good Omens is a comic novel about demons, angels, prophecies and Armageddon, in which a mix-up at a hospital causes the Antichrist to be brought up as a perfectly normal kid with bizarre consequences as he develops his special talents with neither demons nor angels for guidance.

Terry Gilliam would make a movie of this book if those with the money and inclination to make such a thing possible were not as rare as Klatchian Mist.

Blurb

According to the Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter – the world's only totally reliable guide to the future – the world will end on a Saturday. Next Saturday, in fact. Just after tea...

Characters

• The Them
  • Adam Young
  • Brian
  • Pepper
  • Wensleydale

• Demons and Angels etc.
  • Aziraphale
  • Beelezebub
  • Crowley
  • Hastur
  • Ligur
  • Earl Beezlemoth
  • The Metatron

• Riders Of The Apocalypse
  • Death
  • Famine
  • Pollution
  • War
• Four Other Riders Of The Apocalypse
  • Greaser
  • Pigbog
  • Scuzz
  • Big Ted

• Witchfinder Army
  • Nurker
  • Newton Pulsifer
  • Shadwell
  • Thou-Shalt-Not-Commit-Adultery Pulsifer

• Anathema Device
• Julia Petley
• Madame Tracy
• The International Express Man
• Mr. Young
• Deirdre Young
• Greasy Johnson
• Mary Loquacious
• Agnes Nutter
• Beryl Ormerod
• Ron Ormerod
• Marjorie Potts
• Warlock Dowling
• Horace Gander
• Dog

Locations

• Atlantis
• Power Cable, Nebraska
• Tadfield
• Turning Point Power Station

Additional Material

The United States edition of Good Omens had numerous alterations to the text. The most significant alteration to the main text is the addition of an extra 700-word section just before the end, dealing with what happened to the character of Warlock, the American diplomat's son, who was swapped with Adam. The American edition also adds numerous footnotes not found in British editions as well as changes to the spelling throughout so that the text corresponded to American English norms rather than British English. One howler of an error has "Aziraphile nipping across the city of Hell" early on. Comparing this to the British text, it appears the American editor was correcting a non-existent error, not knowing Hull is an English port city on the east coast. It may be grim, it may have had the pugnacious John Prescott as its MP and it may be in the East Riding of Yorkshire - but it isn't quite Hell...

Editions since 2006 have contained extra material by Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman: a new Foreword to the book, 'Good Omens, The Facts' an interview with the two authors and two articles by each author, 'Neil Gaiman On Terry Pratchett' and 'Terry Pratchett On Neil Gaiman.'

Adaptations

Radio Drama CD Cover

Good Omens was adapted by BBC Radio 4 as a full audio drama, this was later released on CD.

Annotations

The book satirizes some aspects of the '70s movie The Omen, where an American diplomat has Damien, the Antichrist, for a child. Although Damien is dismissed as a name, and isn't the Antichrist anyway, he is raised by a supernatural nanny, and with a birthday party that gets out of hand.

Right on the very last page of the book, there is a line stating:

"If you want to see the future, imagine a boot..."

Pratchett and Gaiman amend "boot" to "sneaker", but the reference is clearly to the closing paragraphs of George Orwell's 1984:

"If you want to see the future, imagine a boot, stamping on a human face, forever."

This is softened in Good Omens to a sneaker, or trainer, with untied laces, on the foot of the Antichrist, who has just succeeded in thwarting the desire of both Heaven and Hell to stamp on the collective face of the human race until something breaks beyond repair. (What else is Armageddon, after all)