Good Omens

Good Omens is a comic novel written jointly by Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman and published in 1990. Its premise recalls Richard Donner's 1976 horror film The Omen, but it treats the subject with irony: the birth of the Antichrist, the approach of the End Times and the old debate over the balance between good and evil are all handled as a comedy in which heaven and hell appear as bureaucracies with their own worries.

The story centres on Aziraphale, an angel who was once guardian of the Eastern Gate of Eden, and Crowley, a demon who was originally the serpent that tempted Eve. Having lived on Earth since its creation, the two have grown fond of its comforts and of humanity. When Hell hands Crowley the infant Antichrist with orders to swap him for the son of an American diplomat stationed in Britain, he realises that the Apocalypse is coming. He persuades Aziraphale to help him sabotage it, and the pair decide to shape the child's upbringing from within, posing as a nanny and a gardener so that he never fully chooses between good and evil.

A mix-up at the hospital, however, means that the real Antichrist is another boy, Adam Young, who grows up unnoticed in the quiet village of Lower Tadfield in Oxfordshire with his friends Pepper, Wensleydale and Brian. As the foretold end draws near, Adam begins without realising it to bend reality to match his own idea of how the world should be. Meanwhile the Four Horsemen assemble in modern guise: War is a war correspondent, Famine a dietician and fast-food tycoon, Pollution has replaced Pestilence, who retired after the discovery of penicillin, and Death rides a motorbike.

Other figures move alongside them. Anathema Device, a descendant of the witch Agnes Nutter, whose prophecies are perfectly accurate yet so cryptic that they are useful only to the time and person they were meant for, is searching for the boy. Newton Pulsifer, a clumsy young man, joins the Witchfinder Army, a body now reduced to its single remaining sergeant, Shadwell. All of them converge on Tadfield, where the Horsemen try to start a nuclear war by tampering with computer systems.

The book is built as a web of interlocking plots that tighten towards a climax, and its humour depends on the contrast between the grandeur of prophecy and the ordinariness of its characters. Crowley and Aziraphale form its central pair: centuries of friendship lead them to question their superiors' orders, and the novel hints wryly that the divine plan may be less clear than heaven claims.

Readers received it warmly, and it became a cult favourite. In 2003 the BBC placed it at number 68 in its The Big Read survey. It has enjoyed a second life through its television adaptation and its continuing popularity among admirers of British comic fantasy.