Sad
And I'm not ashamed to say that I may have shed a tear for Terry when I read the news.
Sir Terry remembered: Dickens' fire, Tolkien's imagination, and the wit of Wodehouse
Sir Terry Pratchett has left us at the age of 66, but he has gifted the next generation a massive archive of fiction and non-fiction that will delight, amuse and inform readers for years to come. It's a sad day at the El Reg offices, many of us were devoted fans. He was born on April 28, 1948, and wrote fiction as a teen. At …
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Thursday 12th March 2015 19:57 GMT David Webb
Sadly missed
I will miss waiting on this next instalment of his books. However, he appears to have completed a Discworld novel in 2014....
He completed his last book, a new Discworld novel, in the summer of 2014, before succumbing to the final stages of the disease. http://www.pjsmprints.com/
So it looks like we have one final book to come from him, just think, a Discoworld novel that will not be signed by the great man.
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Thursday 12th March 2015 20:32 GMT frank ly
Re: Sadly missed
From Wikipedia and other sources, it appears that the book completed last year is called The Shepherd's Crown and is part (the last) of the Tiffany Aching arc of books. (Publication date seems to be July, or autumn, 2015.) These books are set in the Discworld and were intended for a 'young adult' audience. Personally, as a quite old adult, I found 'I Shall Wear Midnight' to be a very mature story, wonderfully told.
I'll be buying it as soon as it becomes available.
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Friday 13th March 2015 14:20 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: Sadly missed
TA is a wonderful series and I have, as a 40 something year old, enjoyed them immensely. As has my ten year old daughter.
I will shed a tear if I finish the book as I did when I heard the news but I'm mulling over the idea of buying it and keeping it, unread, on a shelf, so there's always one more book
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Thursday 12th March 2015 20:07 GMT David Given
He was also an early Internet and social media adoptee, back when it was called Usenet, and spent a lot of time chatting with fans on alt.fan.pratchett.
Also, don't forget his rather more obscure science fiction: _The Dark Side of the Sky_ and _Strata_. I like them both a great deal and they're a lot more thoughtful than they first appear. (The latter features the first appearance of a science-fictional proto-discworld; alas, it also features a ubiquitous typo throughout where it uses 'altitude jets' instead of 'attitude jets'.)
Also, fun fact: _The Colour of Magic_ is a straight Fritz Leiber parody, right down to the structure. Watch for Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser's cameo in the first chapter!
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Friday 13th March 2015 12:52 GMT Alien8n
It was through afp that I got to know him personally, he was always willing to chat with his fans. I have a signed photo of him from the convention in '96 holding the Podling (aged 3 months) which he duly signed "I don't sign small children". This was an in joke as the saying went that he'd sign "anything except a blank cheque, but even that was arguable" and behind me was another fellow afper with a pen for him to sign my daughter with. My only regret in life is turning down the offer to go for a curry with him when I had the chance.
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Friday 13th March 2015 02:45 GMT Anonymous Coward
I remember them discussing a book (Interesting Times, I think). Mark Lawson and Mark Kermode or Tony Parsons (I can't remember which) thought it was funny, and Tom Paulin and Allison Pearson didn't. No surprise on the split of the panel. (However, when Mark Lawson referred to Truckle the Uncivil's walking sticks that said LOVE and HATE, Allison Pearson laughed and Kermode/Parsons called her out on it, implying that she just wouldn't admit that she found it funny.). I remember Allison Pearson complaining about the cliched language structure Pratchett used, missing the whole point that he was writing about a bunch of old heroes so would have been parodying fantasy prose.
Anyway, I enjoyed Discworld as a teenager and young adult, and the reason I stopped reading them was because I stopped reading fiction.
Woof.
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Friday 13th March 2015 09:37 GMT Spiracle
Allison Pearson complaining about the cliched language structure Pratchett used, missing the whole point that he was writing about a bunch of old heroes so would have been parodying fantasy prose...
To be fair the junction in the Venn diagram of Interesting Times and I Don't Know How She Does It readers is probably fairly slim.
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Monday 16th March 2015 10:31 GMT Michael H.F. Wilkinson
Re: "Anthill inside"
Got that t-shirt, will wear it with more pride. It generally takes my CS students a little while to realise I am not wearing a T-shirt with an Intel ad.
What I will miss most about Terry Pratchett is the warmth and love of humanity with all its shortcomings that oozes from all his work. The one thing that really offended him is "treating people like things". He was a wonderful man with an unparallelled talent
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Monday 16th March 2015 10:56 GMT TRT
Re: "Anthill inside"
I liked the practicality of his mind. The ninja getting tooled up in Pyramids - weighted himself up so badly with so much gear that he fell over backwards. Never seems to be a problem in the fantasy genre, that you carry so much gear you can't move.
And then there's the communications Clacks.
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Friday 13th March 2015 10:38 GMT Anonymous Coward
@Spiracle
Also, Oxfam bookshops are full of old Booker prize winners that look as if they have never been opened: Terry Pratchett, Jacqueline Wilson, not so much.
Sadly, authors who don't actually have anything to say seem to spend the most time praising themselves and their friends for the way they say it.
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Friday 13th March 2015 08:34 GMT Anonymous Coward
"He annoyed other authors with his writing style"
He annoyed English teachers because they wanted pupils to learn through the "established" canon of authors and he gleefully adopted and adapted all the canons. It must be no fun to try to explain postmodernism or magical realism to a class when a couple of boys at the back are muttering "Terry Pratchett".
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Thursday 12th March 2015 20:30 GMT A. Coatsworth
I've heard the names of Terry Pratchett and Discworld before, but I've never read any of the books...
After reading the dozens of loving comments left by commenters it the notes published by El Reg, I really want to get in the Discworld... er... world.
I'd really appreciate tips or comments on what would be the best approach to Sir Terry's work
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Friday 13th March 2015 09:09 GMT Martin
Hmmm...
I would actually NOT recommend starting with The Colour of Magic. My justification for this is that it's the only one I've read, and it just didn't do anything for me. I've said this to many Terry Pratchett fans and they have all, to a man (or woman), said "Well, it's actually not particularly good compared to the later ones. Perhaps you should try one of the others." Small Gods certainly came up as a recommendation.
I've never got round to trying one of the others. Perhaps I will now.
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Friday 13th March 2015 10:42 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: Hmmm...
"I would actually NOT recommend starting with The Colour of Magic"
Completely agree. It's interesting watching someone start to develop a idea and a style, but it isn't in the same class as the later books. Reading it put me off completely until I was staying in someone's house in wet weather and read Equal Rites and Pyramids, and then started to seek out the rest.
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Thursday 12th March 2015 20:46 GMT David 132
Welcome.
All of the below is IMHO, and I'm sure everyone here will have their own thoughts...
I'd probably start with one of his Discworld books. Although they feature recurring characters and in-jokes, this doesn't mean you have to start with the very first. His style of writing and humour changed slightly over the years, meaning that some of the later books are much funnier than the very earliest ones.
Two "best book to read first" suggestions would be "Guards, Guards!" (introduces the hard-bitten, cynical misanthrope night watchman Sam Vimes) or "Witches Abroad" (which (ahaha) introduces the witches Granny Weatherwax, Nanny Ogg and Magrat Garlick).
My favourite of all time is the non-Discworld "Good Omens", which as TFA mentions was a collaboration with Neil Gaiman. An angel and a demon collaborate to prevent the Apocalypse, involving the M25, black nuns, paintballing, a Satanic Hellhound who likes to chase cats, and various "Americans and other aliens".
RIP Sir Pterry. We met only once, at a book-signing in Chester, and my pimply 20-something self was so over-awed to meet one of my literary heroes that I stuttered incoherently and made a fool of myself.
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Thursday 12th March 2015 21:14 GMT David Given
I probably *wouldn't* start with _Colour of Magic_. It's rather different from the rest of the series, being a Fritz Leiber parody, and his style only starts to gel a few books later on.
My recommendations? _Small Gods_, which a minister once described to me as the best book about religion he'd ever read. _Pyramids_, which is about fate, belief (not the same as religion!) and camels. _Mort_, about growing up, death, and Death.
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Friday 13th March 2015 03:43 GMT Yet Another Anonymous coward
Small Gods is the best literature
Pyramids is my personal favourite
Colour of Magic/Light fantastic - good, but you probably have to be a fantasy fan to get all the jokes
The guards books (Guards Guards / Feet of Clay / Men at Arms ) and the Von Lipwig (Going Postal / Making Money / Raising Steam) are probably most readable stories
The only dissapointing book is Monstrous Regiment.
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Biting the hand that feeds IT
