The cover of the book, designed by Paul Kidby, is a parody of the 1768 painting "An Experiment on a Bird in the Air Pump" by Joseph Wright of Derby.

They decide to appoint Rincewind, whom they dragged out of bed in the early hours of the morning, the Egregious Professor of Cruel and Unusual Geography, and send him down (against his will) to investigate this strange world.

This stabilizes the ball enough that, over a score of millennia (the wizards can skip over vast periods of Roundworld time, allowing them to view the history of the universe in less than a month), blobs of life emerge, ready to begin evolving into more complex forms.

[6] The book and its sequel, The Science of Discworld II: The Globe, have been reviewed by Ian C.W Hardy for Trends in Ecology & Evolution.

Writing about the first book, he noted that it "deals with the ontogeny of our universe and recapitulates phylogeny", or, in simpler words, the authors "give us their take on chimpanzees and human origins, brains, pattern recognition, self-awareness, self-referentiality, cultural evolution and space exploration".

[7] Cohen reports that it was extremely difficult to find a publisher who was willing to purchase the book, saying "I spent two-and-a-half years going around editors.