★★★☆☆ A Collegiate Casting-Out of Devilish Devices, by Terry Pratchett
An Unseen University Faculty Meeting
A Collegiate Casting-Out of Devilish Devices
Terry Pratchett
An Unseen University faculty meeting
A Collegiate Casting-Out of Devilish Devices is listed by Goodreads as #37.5 in Terry Pratchett's Discworld series. That places it between #37, Unseen Academicals and #38, I Shall Wear Midnight. True, it makes sense to read it just after Unseen Academicals, since it continues the familiar bickering of the Unseen University Faculty. although in internal chronology it probably comes before #34, Thud!, based on the role of Inspector A.E. Pessimal.
It's a short story originally published in The Times Higher Education Supplement. My efforts to find it online failed. Instead I I read it in the Pratchett short fiction collection A Blink of the Screen: Collected Shorter Fiction.
It is short -- 5 pages. It is a vignette, rather than a story, strictly defined. It presents a UU Faculty meeting, when they determine how to respond to Inspector Pessimal's demands.
Myself a former University Professor, I am sad to say that this is not even slightly like any faculty meeting I ever attended. Ah, well.
A Blink of the Screen on Amazon