authors Terry Pratchett
and Neil Gaiman
.
The book is a comedy
and a quasi-parody of the 1976 film The Omen
(as well as other books and films of the genre), concerning the birth of the son of Satan
, the coming of the End Times
and the attempts of the angel
Aziraphale and the demon
Crowley to avert them, having become accustomed to their comfortable situations in the human world.
Kids! Bringing about Armageddon can be dangerous. Do not attempt it in your own home.
It was a nice day. All the days had been nice. There had been rather more than seven of them so far, and rain hadn't been invented yet. But clouds massing east of Eden suggested that the first thunderstorm was on its way, and it was going to be a big one.
" A demon can get into real trouble, doing the right thing." He nudged the angel. "Funny if we both got it wrong, eh? Funny if I did the good thing and you did the bad one, eh?" "Not really," said Aziraphale.
GOOD OMENS : A Narrative of Certain Events occurring in the last eleven years of human history, in strict accordance as shall be shewn with: The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter Compiled and edited, with Footnotes of an Educational Nature and Precepts for the Wise, by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett.
God moves in extremely mysterious, not to say, circuitous ways. God does not play dice with the universe; He plays an ineffable game of His own devising, which might be compared, from the perspective of any of the other players, to being involved in an obscure and complex version of poker in a pitch-dark room, with blank cards, for infinite stakes, with a Dealer who won't tell you the rules, and who smiles all the time.
Many phenomena — wars, plagues, sudden audits — have been advanced as evidence for the hidden hand of Satan in the affairs of Man, but whenever students of demonology get together the M25 London orbital motorway is generally agreed to be among the top contenders for Exhibit A.
All tapes left in a car for more than about a fortnight metamorphose into Best of Queen albums.
It'd be a funny old world, he reflected, if demons went round trusting one another.
That's how it goes, you think you're on top of the world, and suddenly they spring Armageddon on you. The Great War, the Last Battle. Heaven versus Hell, three rounds, one Fall, no submission. And that'd be that. No more world. That's what the end of the world meant. No more world. Just endless Heaven or, depending who won, endless Hell. Crowley didn't know which was worse.
He'd been an angel once. He hadn't meant to Fall. He'd just hung around with the wrong people.