[HN Gopher] Discworld on Page and Screen, Part 1: Serious Comedy ___________________________________________________________________ Discworld on Page and Screen, Part 1: Serious Comedy Author : doppp Score : 120 points Date : 2022-07-22 14:33 UTC (8 hours ago) (HTM) web link (www.filfre.net) (TXT) w3m dump (www.filfre.net) | swayvil wrote: | I find Pratchett's incessant moralizing and judging and lame | caricatures to be unappealing. And when you remove that meat | what's left is an extremely conventional and mediocre skeleton. | It's like Stephen King with the horror switched out for glitter. | Walmart grade stuff. | | And all the old ladies are randy witches who ride Harleys. Ugh. | bityard wrote: | > And all the old ladies are randy witches | | No, just the one | [deleted] | 0x1062 wrote: | read the room buddy | robocat wrote: | Note that Terry Pratchett is referred to as "Sir Pterry" in some | circles. | | I watched "The Colour of Magic" the other day - unfortunately the | book is not well represented by the movie. | cycomanic wrote: | I have not seen anyone mention the long earth series, a | collaboration between Terry Pratchett and Stephen Baxter. It is | based on a very interesting concept. Very different in its style | to the discworld books, but shows off how good a writer Pratchett | was even when straying from his usual fare. | armenarmen wrote: | Long Earth was a great series with the fun premise of "how's | the world going to work in super abundance backed by a potato | ina box" | ben_w wrote: | To me, Lobsang and Sister Agnes (even as they appeared in _The | Long Cosmos_ ) felt much more _Discworld_ -y than did almost | any part of _Raising Steam_. | | I have fond memories of the ascendant of the _Discworld_ | series, _Strata_ , which is IMO better than the book it's | riffing on ( _Ringworld_ ). Likewise I enjoyed _The Dark Side | of the Sun_ , which riffs off a different theme from _Known | Space_ (though I don't recall any of that theme ending as a | theme in _Discworld_ ). | | _Good Omens_ was also another fantastic collaboration, between | Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman. | simonw wrote: | If you haven't read a Discworld book I'm going to throw my vote | behind Guards! Guards! as a great starting point. | | I re-read it recently and it was even better than I remember it | being when I first read it as a teenager - I think because my | extra life experience meant that I understood the themes of the | novel more. Incredibly insightful social commentary. | munk-a wrote: | I will seconds Guards! Guards! it's what I always suggest to | friends as a starting point and it leads more naturally into a | coherent series as you follow Vimes and the city watch - as an | alternative the witches are quite hilarious especially if | you're familiar with Shakespeare (a particularly good one here | might be Lords and Ladies). The Lipwig books are also quite | excellent featuring a lot of most folks favorite characters but | I think they work better if you're familiar with the setting. | | Lastly, I think a really good shout out is Monstrous Regiment | which is absolutely hilarious, especially if you _don 't_ know | the characters and just incredibly wholesome. | its_bbq wrote: | Monstrous Regiment was my first one! It's nice as a | standalone book and I think really shows off the | compassionate satire that the essay is talking about | ErrantX wrote: | Vimes is my favourite character arc; I don't always rate | Guards Guards but it is essential entry to Night Watch (IMO | one of the best books). | | Also a shout out for underrated options; Soul Music (great | tag line, lovely observational comedy) and Carpe Jugulum | (some fan favourite characters, but also one of my fav bit- | part characters - Lacrimosa) | simonw wrote: | In terms of underrated options: I have a very strong | affection for Pyramids. It's almost completely unconnected | from the other books - it starts in Ankh Morpork but | quickly heads out to Djelibeybi (Child of the Djel) - the | Discworld's ancient Egypt. And it's loosely about quantum | physics. | nop_slide wrote: | Pyramids is also my favorite (so far, still working | through the series chronologically)! | | Without too much of a spoiler, but at the point whenever, | uh, the physics and time gets weird, I was dying laughing | about the interactions between the pyramid building | brothers. | | I also read it during the week my son was born this year | and generally have some really positive associations with | it :) | munk-a wrote: | Another sort of weird one is Small Gods which is | _intensely good_ and definitely very message driven. | Small Gods, Pyramids, Soul Music and Night Watch are | probably peak pratchett when it comes to actually being | fantastical - a lot of his writing is very grounded but | in those books he really leaves the beaten path to | explore something very... odd. | gmadsen wrote: | good choice. My first was going postal, and is a great self | contained book | aspaviento wrote: | And a great movie too. The actor who plays the role of Moist | does a great job. | schoenobates wrote: | I love Guards but would also throw in Thief of Time which is a | fabulous read | dejv wrote: | Guards! Guards! is great. I would also add Interesting times | for more prototypical Discworld and also Truth is pure gold. | KerrAvon wrote: | Guards! Guards! is great, but the thing about Pratchett is that | his writing got significantly better every few books until the | very end of his life. Later entries in the series -- Night | Watch and Thud! -- are much better. | | As such, I'd recommend Going Postal as the entry point for the | uninitiated. | contravariant wrote: | I kind of feel that you need to read the Colour of Magic to | get a proper introduction to the Discworld itself though | (just ignore the story though, it's rather flimsy), but it | might not be necessary to read it first. | Ntrails wrote: | I remember colour of magic being pretty hard work and not | super fun. I was glad I made it to the later stuff that was | far better crafted | swyx wrote: | i knew you had good taste :) | | i love Small Gods as a starter novel because it is pretty self | contained. | mrwh wrote: | Small Gods is the one I managed to get signed. A bookshop in | Dorchester, and Pratchett gave an excellent talk before. I | say "managed to get signed", though the joke at one point was | Pratchett signed so many books, unsigned copies were the rare | ones. | dspillett wrote: | My first was Reaper Man, which isn't a bad place to start. | Better from a context point of view to start with Mort perhaps, | but not necessary. | | His take on Death often fills the role of the outsider, trying | to understand us and by doing so exposing our oddities, much | like Data in Trek and other such characters. Possibly that is | why the books that feature him heavily are some of my | favourites. | ChrisMarshallNY wrote: | Just _DO NOT WATCH THE WATCH!_! | | It will leave scars... | munk-a wrote: | As a long time Pratchett enjoyer I thought it was pretty well | done, it certainly wasn't a screen version of Guards! Guards! | but it was pretty clearly inspired by it and, honestly, it | managed to bring humor of its own right to the party. | | I certainly wouldn't recommend it as an introduction to | Pratchett but it is quite Pratchett adjacent. | aspaviento wrote: | No, thanks. There was a reason why Pratchett described his | characters the way he did and this show didn't respect that | at all. This show didn't get inspired by Discworld, it just | used some character names to get some track that it | wouldn't get otherwise. | ChrisMarshallNY wrote: | Fair 'nuff. | | _Good Omens_ was awesome, though. I was spoiled by that. | True labor of love. | munk-a wrote: | If you give it another try sometime please push Jeremy | Irons out of your head as Vetinari - Anna Chancellor is | an absolutely amazing casting. | ChrisMarshallNY wrote: | Yeah. That was ... _awkward_. I liked Charles Dance, and | I love Anna Chancellor. | | I probably will give it another go, sometime. I like most | of the cast. | KerrAvon wrote: | It's too bad Neil can't be persuaded to showrun a | Discworld anthology series or something. The only video | to really nail Discworld was Hogfather. (Going Postal had | excellent casting but the script diverged way too far | from the book.) | ChrisMarshallNY wrote: | Yeah. I have heard that there will be a "Season Two" of | _Good Omens_. Apparently, Gaiman and Pratchett were | working on a sequel, when PTerry goot too sick to | complete it. | anotherman554 wrote: | That's not what happened. Gaiman and Pratchett outlined a | sequel to the _Good Omens_ novel when they were at a | comic book convention together in 1989, were sharing a | room, and couldn 't sleep. Aside from that outline they | were never working on it together as they were busy with | their own projects. Gaiman dug up this outline and is | turning it into a second season of the show. | ChrisMarshallNY wrote: | Ah...that makes sense (and me, a bit sad, as I don't know | if Gaiman will be able to do as good a job). | mrwh wrote: | Guards! Guards! is excellent. I'd vote for Wyrd Sisters too. | | Incidentally, I think the Wyrd Sisters cartoon is the most | successful Discworld adaptation | (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wyrd_Sisters_(TV_series)). I | must admit, I've not tried the recent series based (very | loosely it seems) on Guards! Guards! I don't what to be That | Fan who says they got everything wrong but... | [deleted] | npsomaratna wrote: | Tried watching the recent series ("The watch"). Not | Pratchett. | | I hesitate to use the word "unwatchable", but this series | comes close. It is both an awful adaptation of the Discworld | universe--and awful even otherwise. | memling wrote: | > [M]y vote behind Guards! Guards! as a great starting point. | | That was my introduction, when it came out, but I recommend | _Hogfather_ to most as it captures the wide breadth of his | writing. There 's a lot of great comedy in it, but also some | serious and scary moments. | SamBam wrote: | If you have young daughters, though, the Tiffany Aching books | are a great place to start. | bgribble wrote: | I've read the Tiffany Aching books aloud to both my daughter | and my son and they both loved them. | | Partly (mostly?) for the spectacle of me trying to read a Nac | Mac Feegle accent :) | | FWIW I only recently learned that "crivens" is maybe a real | expression, a much-shortened form of "Christ defend us". In | the same way as "God blind me" reduces to "blimey"... | SamBam wrote: | The kids similarly love my Nac Mac Feegle accent. They can | blame me for their terrible imitation of a Scottish accent | when they're adults. | Avicebron wrote: | I would recommend any Discworld book wholeheartedly, anything | with Rincewind is hilarious (The last continent is a favorite | of mine), also I think Moving Pictures is pretty interesting | commentary on modern entertainment. I read them all over a | decade ago and some of the lines I remember still make me | chuckle. EDIT: Also the movie(s) Going Postal are great..."The | Smoking Gnu" :) | NineStarPoint wrote: | The main problem with Rincewind is that the entry point for | his story is The Color of Magic+The Light Fantastic, which as | the first two Discworld novels are much weaker than later | books in the series. Guards Guards is just a much better | first book to read, that or Equal Rites is more | representative of the quality Discworld would come to have. | | Then again my first Discworld novel was Making Money and I | loved it even without context (and the "Industrial | Revolution" sub-series starting with moving pictures remains | my favorite to this day), so you could probably just start at | Sourcery and go from there anyway. | giobox wrote: | Completely agree on this point. The first two Discworld | novels, while still hilarious, take being a high fantasy | story much more seriously than the later stories do. I'd go | as far as to argue Pratchett still hadn't found the | "discworld voice" in those first two books. | rjbwork wrote: | Moving Pictures is probably my favorite Discworld novel. Even | without considering any of the subtext and commentary it's | just so funny. | [deleted] | jerrysievert wrote: | before his untimely death, he collaborated with Stephen Baxter | for an amazing series of 5 books exploring parallel earths. | definitely worth a read if you want something just a little bit | different from an amazing writer. | schoenobates wrote: | The Long Earth series is fantastic. I'm not a huge fan of | Baxter's work but these books are among my fave scifi reads. | travisgriggs wrote: | Interesting. I did not care for the Long Earth series. But... | I could always tell when Pratchett took over the dialog, and | loved those points. | h2odragon wrote: | A friend loaned me their complete set of Discworld books at about | the time "Mort" came out; they didn't re-print the USA Roc | editions of the earlier titles until "Guards, Guards" got popular | and there was a while there where they were quite valuable and | hard to find. | | Pterry's Usenet presence was a large factor in the popularity | explosion; I recall returning the favor of loaned book with | printouts of the alt.fan.pratchett FAQ. | ErrantX wrote: | If you are a discworld fan it's worth reading Strata, one of his | earliest works. | | This is set in a disc shaped world as well and you can see the | early shape of the discworld concept (the world but also the | style of the books). It's like seeing him work out his voice. | | I love discworld a lot. But Good Omens is, for me, the essence of | the craft of dark humourist fantasy. So many observations on | humanity. | v-erne wrote: | Strata was first Sir Terry book for me - I read it when I was | teenager and was reading science fiction only. Imagine my | suprise reading Colour of magic next, having strata in back of | my head, waiting for the damn space ships to appear. | | And they never did, not in a single discworld book I have read | later in my life (dark side of moon aside coz its not part of | the series). | | Anyways ... I also recommend strata - the ideas on this book | are so vivid and clever that they stay with You for the rest of | your life (mechanical deamon with small wings using super fast | teleportation as a way to implement flight always comes to my | mind whenever I hack a solution with unexpected tools) | egypturnash wrote: | It is hilarious how much Strata owes to Niven's "Ringworld", if | you have read that as well. It goes to its own places in the | end but it sure does spend a lot of time as a direct parody of | that book. | ErrantX wrote: | Absolutely; Pratchett always described it as a direct | "pisstake" of Ringworld (and Niven was a fan) | shaftoe444 wrote: | I was lucky enough to visit a Pratchett exhibition at the | Salisbury museum, near where he lived for most of his adult life. | It had a bunch of his books, papers, things from his life, even | his desk with six monitor set-up, one of which was playing Doom | on loop! | | His deep love of the people of the landscape and people of | Wiltshire and the surroundings, most obvious in the later Tiffany | Aching books, was huge for me as a teenager growing up in this | area. Articulated how I feel about my home better than I ever | could. | | edit: This was the exhibition | https://salisburymuseum.org.uk/whats-on/exhibitions/terry-pr... | totalperspectiv wrote: | Does anyone know where to find the 1978 column Pratchett wrote | about Star Wars? It's referenced in the article but I don't see a | source and would love to read it. | probably_wrong wrote: | The only other information I found was that it was published in | the Bath Chronicle. | | If you have access to their archive, that will narrow it down | to "only" 365 issues. | pmyteh wrote: | I've had a look to see what's in the Bodleian and the British | Library from there, but it doesn't look like 1978 is online. | Post-1998 is on LexisNexis, and the BL's (paid) online | service has up to 1950, but there's a gap in the middle. You | could almost certainly go and read it in the BL reading room | in London, though: their print/microfilm coverage of British | newspapers is very good. | weeblewobble wrote: | I found a little more info about it but unfortunately no copy: | | "'SO, BANG GOES THE PERSONAL TOUCH', Bath & West Evening | Chronicle, 22 April 1978, p. 10. This is TP's 'Star Wars' piece | that he tended to mention when talking of his years at the | Chronicle, but I could not track it down when I searched the | issues in the British Newspaper Library in Colindale, North | London (now closed and moved to the town of Boston Spa). | Perhaps it was in an issue missing from their collection, or I | was looking in the wrong issues. Star Wars was released in | London in December 1977, but only reached Bath the following | April. Discovered by David Moger, to whom my thanks. CS" | chrisma0 wrote: | > "At least you can say that in Pratchett's books, the bloody | elves never sang!" | | Terry Pratchett I think is one of my favourite writers to read. | The absurdity of his fantasy settings is just the right level of | entertaining for me. Everything flows so smoothly that I | sometimes get the subtle jokes only on my second read-through. | bombcar wrote: | There are many _many_ jokes that are so obscure as to be almost | impossible for non-British readers to discover. A trip through | the l-space wiki will point out many (and there's some I've | noticed that aren't listed there). | | Anytime something is named, it's probably a joke or reference | of some sort. | | It's also quite fun how many of the "inpossible" setups or | situations are just literally copies of real-life stories. | Swizec wrote: | For a modern and non-British take on this genre I would | strongly recommend The Tales of Pell by Kevin Hearne and | Delilah S. Dawson, if anyone's looking. It's got that same | vibe of absurdist humor with real life references in a | fantasy setting. The politics are less about class and more | about identity. | chrisma0 wrote: | Hey, thanks for the recommendations! These sound great. | dstick wrote: | Ok let me geek out a little. Terry Pratchett was a god among man. | A truly special human being whose works are on par with the likes | of Shakespeare and Wagner in describing and exploring human | nature. | | He's well known for his fantasy novels, but he was also a | humanist and an advocate for the right to die. Here's a great | documentary by him, on that subject: | | https://vimeo.com/229120539 | | GNU Terry! | | On a more Hackernews note, there's a special HTTP response header | that is secretly used worldwide to honor Terry. X-Clacks- | Overhead. A reference to the books in which it is said that a | person never dies as long as his name is sent over Clacks (the | Discworld internet / telegram). | | There are lots of big sites doing it, because some developer | snuck it in: https://webtechsurvey.com/response-header/x-clacks- | overhead | | Mozilla, Debian, XML, Python, VLC - it's heartwarming. | hyperman1 wrote: | It's the first time I see other names than Terry's in that | header. But it makes sense, of course. | travisgriggs wrote: | Thank you for sharing this. Going Postal was my first Pratchett | book. I did not know about this X-Clacks-Overhead. This has | made my day, and nearly brought tears to my eyes. | AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote: | If you've never read any Pratchett and want to try it out, rather | than read one of the many Discworld novels, or any of his sci-fi, | or the Bromeliad or Johnny Maxwell trilogies, I'd instead | recommend the stand-alone novel Nation. It is my opinion that it | is the most concise demonstration of everything great about | Pratchett's writing. | cycomanic wrote: | While I really liked Nation, I don't think it represents the | random laugh/giggle on the train type humour that is so common | in the discworld novels. For me the humour is a bit more subtle | in Nation. | bityard wrote: | I'm about a little more than halfway through it right now and | already it's one of the most beautiful works I've ever read. | escapologybb wrote: | I absolutely loved Terry Pratchett Discworld, make me laugh at | some real bad times in my life. | | I'm currently listening to thief of time which is weirdly good, | didn't like it at first but it really is good. That and the last | continent. | | Obviously this is all secondary to the Night Watch, Sam Vimes is | definitely on Hacker News somewhere, right? :-) | ryandvm wrote: | One thing that surprises me whenever Discworld comes up is that | nobody ever mentions Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents. I | get that it doesn't really tie into any of the other story arcs, | but it is indeed a Discworld book (the 28th). It's also one of | the few that was intentionally written for children. | | I read it with my 11 year old daughter and was expecting it to be | fairly ho hum, but was absolutely blown away by the story and the | satire. | | Not only do I highly, highly recommend it for reading with | children, it's absolutely a great read for adults. | thallian wrote: | I quite love that story and at least my age says I am an adult. | Very recently I wrote a short (~320 words) review of it in | preparation for my English C2 exam and it even was fun to write | about it :) | dpeck wrote: | I agree. I'm a big fan of the DEATH story arc, but outside of | Mort and Reaper Man, Amazing Maurice might be my favorite book | in the series. So very well written and felt like Pratchett was | at his best. | gonesilent wrote: | good bbc show with Terry Pratchett on the right to pick when to | exit this world. | Decabytes wrote: | Equal Rites was my first Terry Pratchett book after not reading | any since middle school. It was great and I laughed a lot while | reading it | owlninja wrote: | As a kid I somehow stumbled into Discworld first by playing the | point-and-click PC game where Rincewind was voiced by Eric Idle | (probably after much fumbling through soundcards settings). This | is how I discovered the book series and have been a fan ever | since. Such amazing books on so many levels! | chamakits wrote: | "Did anyone get the number of that donkey cart?" | | Same for me! Except I played it on PS1. I didn't find out about | the book series until like 10 years after. For better or for | worse I now have a picture in my brain for Rincewind, | Twoflower, and The Luggage purely based on the game. But still | love it. | owlninja wrote: | Same! For better or worse the image of the characters from | those games are etched in my mind when reading through the | relevant books. | robswc wrote: | I usually don't read a lot of fiction but absolutely make the | exception for Terry Pratchett! | bombcar wrote: | In a way he's like Weird Al - technically Al is a parody artist | but he had an excellent mastery of many, many styles of music. | | Similarly Pratchett is technically a fantasy author but some of | his books are actually crime/detective novels, sci-fi, even | romance. | | Many people who say "I only read fantasy" are quite surprised | when you point out many of the Guard books are just straight | detective stories; similar to how many people are shocked to | realize that Blues Brothers, is at heart, a musical. | ChrisMarshallNY wrote: | I recommend his _The Bromeliad Trilogy_. | | https://www.terrypratchettbooks.com/books/the-bromeliad/ | | Cool alternate way of looking at the world. | robswc wrote: | Great point! | | That's exactly one of the reasons I love the books. They seem | to be able to wrap up a ton of concepts/stories I like in a | way that preserves the quality and to top it off, incredibly | fun to read. | winReInstall wrote: | Some of the books also ventured pretty close to darkness, | Night Watch had humorist tracesd, but mostly it was a | timejump back into a bleak, darker past. | aspaviento wrote: | One thing I love about Discworld is how it evolved between | novels. Each of them added a piece to its history and you could | see how the events of one book affected the lifestyle of the | citizens of Ank-Morpork in others. | travisgriggs wrote: | I love Terry Pratchett. I have read (and reread and reread) | nearly everything he has written. His early works were more | monty-pythonesque than his later ones (less plot, more random | hillarity). I advise against a "let's start from the beginning | and read to the end" strategy where Color of Magic or the Light | Fantistic were your starters. | | Pratchett is a superb satirist (Vonnegut is the only equal I have | discovered). His dialog is great. There are so many chuckle | worthy moments. And then there are just really deep profound | moments as well. You can read them in any order. There are | reappearing characters, but each book stands on its own. They | focus more on immediate content than overall plot arcs. The more | you soak yourself in discworld in general, in any order, the | funnier and more rewarding it all gets. | | The book that has the most cross over with the reasons we all | post to HN is probably Going Postal, because it satirizes the | world of information dispersal. Who owns the content? Who gets to | be the gatekeepers, etc. | | If you like Monty Python style humor, you'll probably enjoy those | that have Rincewind and/or the Unseen University the most. | | I love any of the books with Death in it (Hogfather, Reaper Man, | Mort, Soul Music, Thief of Time). | | My son loved all of the Sam Vimes books. If you love | police/detective stuff, this is for you. | | If you want a little more plot, the Tiffany Aching series has | that. Read all of these aloud (multiple times) to all of 3 of my | girls. | | I don't even know how best to introduce/characterize/promote The | Witches (Weatherwax, Ogg, et al). If you value common sense and | wish there were more of it in the world? | | If you couldn't be bothered to read, then watch the BBC mini | series "Good Omens", it's on Prime. It's derived from a book of | the same name written by Pratchett and Gaiman (though I think | Terry did most of it, since it feels much more Pratchett than | Gaiman to me). And they did a superb job of adapting and staying | true to the book. | cycomanic wrote: | > If you couldn't be bothered to read, then watch the BBC mini | series "Good Omens", it's on Prime. It's derived from a book of | the same name written by Pratchett and Gaiman (though I think | Terry did most of it, since it feels much more Pratchett than | Gaiman to me). And they did a superb job of adapting and | staying true to the book. | | I'm not sure I agree. I find the book definitely has a clear | signature of both authors, which makes it so great. I love | Pratchett and some of Gaiman works are absolutely genius | (although I find that unlike Pratchett reading a book from him | is not guaranteed to appeal to me, even for his popular books), | so this combination is just a dream team, the only way it could | be topped is if their story was published in an anthology | edited by George RR Martin). | martsa1 wrote: | I absolutely adore the discworld books. I've reread many of them | several times over the years, they are without doubt a | significant contributor to both my world view, and my vocabulary. | I can't wait to raise my children with them. | | I typically recommend either Small Gods, Wyrd Sisters, Pyramids | or Mort as an entry into the discworld. There are so many good | start points though. | | I can never decide whether to recommend reading a specific | character arc, or to read them in publishing or chronological | order. I've enjoyed re-reading character arcs a lot though. | boomboomsubban wrote: | > When you combined the sales of all of his novels together, he | became simply the most popular single British author of the 1990s | | I'm honestly surprised that Pratchett's ~20 novels beat the three | Harry Potter books released in the 90's. That may be because I'm | an American though, and while I knew one guy that had read some | Pratchett in school seemingly everyone had read Harry Potter. | ErrantX wrote: | I mean clearly HP craze has smashed Discworld in the end. But | the first three HP books were released in the late 90s, whereas | Pratchett wrote 16 novels through the decade (and something | like 5-6 in the 80s). So he had volume on his side. | boomboomsubban wrote: | While he did, Harry Potter books are huge. Looking at the | best selling books article on Wikipedia, all of the Discworld | books sold 90 million total copies, the first Harry Potter | sold 120 million. So I'm guessing that claim is only for | books sold during the 90's, but Rowling sold far more copies | of books published in the 90's | ErrantX wrote: | Yes I agree that is how it is being claimed. | | Interestingly; the first HP book was published in 1997 but | the print run was only 500. The book wasn't published in | the US till late 1998 and by that point hadn't even sold | half a million copies. | | I believe it kind of blew up in sales through 1999 but the | UK -> US lag meant most of the sales were in the 2000s. | bambataa wrote: | Discworld was a real joy of mine in my early teens. I think some | of my early computing forays including a Discworld mailing list I | found on a webring via Yahoo or somewhere. I had the Discworld | official map on my wall and used to love getting the editions | printed as tiny hardbacks. | | Probably my favourite sub-series was the Witches and Nanny Ogg. | As I caught up to the newer books I found myself enjoying them | less because it felt like there was more and more philosophising. | Probably what happened was that they got a bit more sophisticated | and I was too immature to understand many of the themes and | allusions. | | Time to start working through them all then! I recently reread | Colour of Magic and it was enjoyable but also clearly had far too | much going on. | | Either Pyramids or Moving Pictures was the only one that I really | struggled to enjoy for some reason. | dcminter wrote: | > it felt like there was more and more philosophising | | If you're referring to the much-later books like Unseen | Academicals, then sadly I think Terry's alzheimers affliction | was probably to blame. As I understand it he reached a point | where he was no longer able to type, but could still dictate. | Certainly somewhere in that process they lost the tautness of | the earlier works. Something to enjoy still (for me) but not | quite the glittering jewels of his intellectual peak. | bambataa wrote: | Yes, from Making Money onwards I think. I haven't actually | read the most recent few because of that. It's a shame to | hear that but still, what a body of work to leave. | ChrisMarshallNY wrote: | I believe that Sir Terry was probably one of the greatest humans | to walk the Earth. Not only was his work wonderful, but he was a | really decent chap, as well. | | Humble, well-educated, polite, honest, and, from everything I've | heard, a joy to work with. | v-erne wrote: | I had been to two book signings of his and had a chanse to | listen to him answering q&a session, reading his book and | telling some stories (and even talk for a brief moment when my | friends from local fun club tried to ask him for interview). I | must say that he seemd to be everything You are saying he was | and more (the way he declined my friends was so humble and | honest that You could feel that he genuinly felt sorry that he | did not have more time for them). | | I also saw his awesome ring with death on it. Im not much into | mens jewelery but this things was honestly amezing (speaking as | a discworld fun of course) | micheljansen wrote: | I recently started reading Discworld after many years of thinking | I would not like it - I honestly don't know why! | | The humour is great and it has way more fun with itself than I | expected. If like me you have been putting off after ignoring | many recommendations: just give it a try! | dcminter wrote: | As there won't be any more coming (alas! alas!) I rather envy | you the prospect of as-yet-unread Pratchett novels to come. | Savour them; a first-read is always special. Happily for me | they bear much repeated re-reading. | micheljansen wrote: | Thanks! It feels like how I imagine someone just discovering | Breaking Bad must feel. It's sad that I never appreciated | Terry Pratchett's work during his lifetime. At least we can | be thankful he produced a lot of work! | dstick wrote: | Discworld MUD plug | | http://discworld.starturtle.net/lpc/ | veddox wrote: | Loved playing this for several years, an absolutely mindblowing | game with a great (if rather small) community! Eventually had | to stop because I just didn't have the time to play regularly | anymore, but I still miss this world... | ycombinete wrote: | Man I keep starting that, but get stuck trying to do basic | stuff like open a cupboard. Can you suggest a good intro? | dcminter wrote: | If you're not aware of it, the Annotated Pratchett File1 is a joy | for the dedicated Pratchett reader. It collates explanations and | observations on the many, many well-layered jokes in his works. I | read a lot and felt like I was getting some pretty obscure jokes, | but the APF opened my eyes to historical and cultural allusions | that had whooshed en masse over my head! I'm in awe at Terry's | erudition. I wish he was still around writing for us :'( | | 1https://www.lspace.org/books/apf/ | rawoke083600 wrote: | Man I love Terry Pratchett's books ! It next to Asimov and Conan | Doyle are my absolute goto for pure joy in literature. | | Also it just hit me ! Captain Vimes and Ronald Swanson (Parks | &Rect ) They from the same cloth :) ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2022-07-22 23:00 UTC)