The Necrotelicomnicon

The title is the whole gag and it is a very good one: necro + telephone + omnicon. A comprehensive directory of the dead. Its Latatian name, Liber Paginarum Fulvarum, translates as the Book of Yellow Pages, and the moment you see it the joke turns into a genuine observation — every grimoire ever written is a directory. Entities, their true names, and the correct procedure for getting one on the line. Lovecraft’s is bound in human skin; Pratchett’s has the same table of contents.

Pratchett did this constantly and it is easy to undersell as parody. It is closer to criticism. He picks up a piece of genre furniture, finds the load- bearing absurdity in it, and puts it back down slightly changed so you can never see the original the same way again. After the Necrotelicomnicon, the Necronomicon’s list of summoning rites reads a little more like a directory and a little less like a menace.

Included here mostly to demonstrate what a cross-universe catalogue can do that a per-fandom wiki cannot: this entry and the Necronomicon’s are four hundred years and two genres apart, and the edge between them is the most interesting thing about either.

On the readability rating. Frequently consulted on the page, never quoted from. We know what it is for and never what it says — which, for a phone book, is fair enough.