Good Omens: The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter,...

The classic collaboration from the internationally bestselling authors Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett, soon to be an original series starring Michael Sheen and David Tennant.?Season 2 of Good Omens coming soon!“Good Omens . . . is something like what would have happened if Thomas Pynchon, Tom Robbins and Don DeLillo had collaborated. Lots of literary inventiveness in the plotting and chunks of very good writing and characterization. It’s a wow. It would make one hell of a movie. Or a heavenly one. Take your pick.” —Washington PostAccording to The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch (the world's only completely accurate book of prophecies, written in 1655, before she exploded), the world will end on a Saturday. Next Saturday, in fact. Just before dinner.So the armies of Good and Evil are amassing, Atlantis is rising, frogs are falling, tempers are flaring. Everything appears to be going according to Divine Plan. Except a somewhat fussy angel and a fast-living demon—both of whom have lived amongst Earth's mortals since The Beginning and have grown rather fond of the lifestyle—are not actually looking forward to the coming Rapture.And someone seems to have misplaced the Antichrist . . .

Amazon.com Review

Pratchett (of Discworld fame) and Gaiman (of Sandman fame) may seem an unlikely combination, but the topic (Armageddon) of this fast-paced novel is old hat to both. Pratchett's wackiness collaborates with Gaiman's morbid humor; the result is a humanist delight to be savored and reread again and again. You see, there was a bit of a mixup when the Antichrist was born, due in part to the machinations of Crowley, who did not so much fall as saunter downwards, and in part to the mysterious ways as manifested in the form of a part-time rare book dealer, an angel named Aziraphale. Like top agents everywhere, they've long had more in common with each other than the sides they represent, or the conflict they are nominally engaged in. The only person who knows how it will all end is Agnes Nutter, a witch whose prophecies all come true, if one can only manage to decipher them. The minor characters along the way (Famine makes an appearance as diet crazes, no-calorie food and anorexia epidemics) are as much fun as the story as a whole, which adds up to one of those rare books which is enormous fun to read the first time, and the second time, and the third time...

From Publishers Weekly

This zany tale of the bungling of Armageddon features an angel, a demon, an 11-year-old Antichrist and a doomsaying witch; unmistakably British humor is in abundance. Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Clive Barker

“The Apocalypse has never been funnier.”

Kirkus Reviews

“Hilariously naughty.”

Booklist

“Wacky and irreverent.”

San Francisco Chronicle

“Reads like the Book of Revelation, rewritten by Monty Python.”

New Orleans Times-Picayune

“Fiendishly funny.”

Rave Reviews

“From beginning to end, GOOD OMENS is side-splittingly funny . . . a ripping good time.”

Rocky Mountain News

“If you’ve never read [GOOD OMENS], don’t miss it now. Grade: A.”

Palm Beach Post

“It could be called The Hitchhiker’s Guide to Armargeddon.”

San Diego Union-Tribune

“[L]ittle asides, quirky observations, simple puns and parody eventually add up to snorts, chortles and outright laughs.”

Detroit Free Press

“What’s so funny about Armageddon? More than you’d think . . . GOOD OMENS has arrived just in time.”

San Diego Union-Tribune

“Full-bore contemporary lunacy. A steamroller of silliness that made me giggle out loud.”

New York Times

“A direct descendant of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.”

fresh, exciting, uproariously funny.”

“An utter delight

Orlando Sentinel

“Outrageous . . . read it for a riotous good laugh!”

New York Review of Science Fiction

“I whooped . . . I laughed . . . I was in near hysterics.:

James Morrow, author of Only Begotten Daughter

“A slapstick Apocalypse, a grinning grimoire, a comic Necronomicon, a hitchhiker’s guide to the netherworld.”

Gene Wolfe

“One Hell of a funny book.”

Locus

“Hilarious!”

Sunday Express (London)

“Huge fun.”

Library Journal

“Irreverently funny and unexpectedly wise . . . Highly recommended.”

Washington Post

“Something like what would have happened if Thomas Pynchon, Tom Robbins and Don DeLillo had collaborated.”

From the Inside Flap

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...From the Paperback edition.

From the Back Cover

According to The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch (the world's only completely accurate book of prophecies, written in 1655, before she exploded), the world will end on a Saturday. Next Saturday, in fact. Just before dinner.So the armies of Good and Evil are amassing, Atlantis is rising, frogs are falling, tempers are flaring. Everything appears to be going according to Divine Plan. Except a somewhat fussy angel and a fast-living demon—both of whom have lived amongst Earth's mortals since The Beginning and have grown rather fond of the lifestyle—are not actually looking forward to the coming Rapture.And someone seems to have misplaced the Antichrist . . .

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Good OmensThe Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, WitchBy Neil GaimanHarperCollins Publishers, Inc.Copyright ©2006 Neil GaimanAll right reserved.ISBN: 0060853980Chapter OneCurrent theories on the creation of the Universe state that, if it was created at all and didn't just start, as it were, unoffi cially, it came into being between ten and twenty thousand million years ago. By the same token the earth itself is generally supposed to be about four and a half thousand million years old.These dates are incorrect.Medieval Jewish scholars put the date of the Creation at 3760 B.C. Greek Orthodox theologians put Creation as far back as 5508 B.C.These suggestions are also incorrect.Archbishop James Usher (1580?1656) published Annales Veteris et Novi Testamenti in 1654, which suggested that the Heaven and the Earth were created in 4004 B.C. One of his aides took the calculation further, and was able to announce triumphantly that the Earth was created on Sunday the 21st of October, 4004 B.C., at exactly 9:00 A.M., because God liked to get work done early in the morning while he was feeling fresh.This too was incorrect. By almost a quarter of an hour.The whole business with the fossilized dinosaur skeletons was a joke the paleontologists haven't seen yet.This proves two things:Firstly, that 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 infi nite stakes, with a Dealer who won't tell you the rules, and who smiles all the time.Secondly, the Earth's a Libra.The astrological prediction for Libra in the "Your Stars Today"column of the Tadfi eld Advertiser, on the day this history begins, read as follows:Libra. September 24?October 23.You may be feeling run down and always in the same old daily round. Home and family matters are highlighted and are hanging fi re. Avoid unnecessary risks. A friend is important to you. Shelve major decisions until the way ahead seems clear. You may be vulnerable to a stomach upset today, so avoid salads. Help could come from an unexpected quarter.This was perfectly correct on every count except for the bit about the salads.It wasn't a dark and stormy night.It should have been, but that's the weather for you. For every mad scientist who's had a convenient thunderstorm just on the night his Great Work is fi nished and lying on the slab, there have been dozens who've sat around aimlessly under the peaceful stars while Igor clocks up the overtime.But don't let the fog (with rain later, temperatures dropping to around forty-fi ve degrees) give anyone a false sense of security. Just because it's a mild night doesn't mean that dark forces aren't abroad. They're abroad all the time. They're everywhere.They always are. That's the whole point.Two of them lurked in the ruined graveyard. Two shadowy figures, one hunched and squat, the other lean and menacing, both of them Olympic-grade lurkers. If Bruce Springsteen had ever recorded "Born to Lurk," these two would have been on the album cover. They had been lurking in the fog for an hour now, but they had been pacing themselves and could lurk for the rest of the night if necessary, with still enough sullen menace left for a final burst of lurking around dawn.Finally, after another twenty minutes, one of them said: "Bugger this for a lark. He should of been here hours ago."The speaker's name was Hastur. He was a Duke of Hell.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.Where they go wrong, of course, is in assuming that the wretched road is evil simply because of the incredible carnage and frustration it engenders every day.In fact, very few people on the face of the planet know that the very shape of the M25 forms the sigil odegra in the language of the Black Priesthood of Ancient Mu, and means "Hail the Great Beast, Devourer of Worlds." The thousands of motorists who daily fume their way around its serpentine lengths have the same effect as water on a prayer wheel, grinding out an endless fog of low-grade evil to pollute the metaphysical atmosphere for scores of miles around.It was one of Crowley's better achievements. It had taken years to achieve, and had involved three computer hacks, two break-ins, one minor bribery and, on one wet night when all else had failed, two hours in a squelchy fi eld shifting the marker pegs a few but occultly incredibly signifi cant meters. When Crowley had watched the fi rst thirty-mile-long tailback he'd experienced the lovely warm feeling of a bad job well done.It had earned him a commendation.Crowley was currently doing 110 mph somewhere east of Slough. Nothing about him looked particularly demonic, at least by classical standards. No horns, no wings. Admittedly he was listening to a Best of Queen tape, but no conclusions should be drawn from this because all tapes left in a car for more than about a fortnight metamorphose into Best of Queen albums. No particularly demonic thoughts were going through his head. In fact, he was currently wondering vaguely who Moey and Chandon were.Crowley had dark hair and good cheekbones and he was wearing snakeskin shoes, or at least presumably he was wearing shoes, and he could do really weird things with his tongue. And, whenever he forgot himself, he had a tendency to hiss.He also didn't blink much.The car he was driving was a 1926 black Bentley, one owner from new, and that owner had been Crowley. He'd looked after it.Continues...Excerpted from Good Omensby Neil Gaiman Copyright ©2006 by Neil Gaiman. Excerpted by permission. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

From AudioFile

Who would have thought that the Apocalypse would be so entertaining? For the first time on audio in the U.S., this 1990 collaboration between authors Gaiman and Pratchett follows the (mis)adventures of Aziraphale, an angel, and Crowley, a demon, as they somewhat grudgingly take up their roles--along with all the hosts of heaven and hell--in precipitating the coming of the Antichrist. The thing is, the Antichrist has been . . . shall we say . . . "misplaced." Narrator Martin Jarvis's outstanding performance captures all of Aziraphale's British officiousness and all of Crowley's vaguely disinterested sarcasm. Jarvis also shines as he bounces from Sister Mary Loquacious to Scarlett Zuibiger to Adam Young, the 11-year-old would-be Antichrist, and so many others, with impressive ease. Moreover, Jarvis's attentiveness to the authors' sense of timing and humor enables his performance to accentuate every twinge of irony in this absurd comedy. A.H.A. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award © AudioFile 2009, Portland, Maine

About the Author

Neil Gaiman is the New York Times bestselling and multi-award winning author and creator of many beloved books, graphic novels, short stories, film, television and theatre for all ages. He is the recipient of the Newbery and Carnegie Medals, and many Hugo, Nebula, World Fantasy, and Will Eisner Awards. Neil has adapted many of his works to television series, including Good Omens (co-written with Terry Pratchett) and The Sandman. He is a Goodwill Ambassador for the UN Refugee Agency UNHCR and Professor in the Arts at Bard College. For a lot more about his work, please visit: https://www.neilgaiman.com/Terry Pratchett (1948–2015) was the acclaimed creator of the globally revered Discworld series. In all, he authored more than fifty bestselling books, which have sold more than one hundred million copies worldwide. His novels have been widely adapted for stage and screen, and he was the winner of multiple prizes, including the Carnegie Medal. He was awarded a knighthood by Queen Elizabeth II for his services to literature in 2009, although he always wryly maintained that his greatest service to literature was to avoid writing any.

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