Re: IntervieVVs
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Re: IntervieVVs
An Interview with Terry Pratchett
One of the most loved fantasy writers of this generation, every one of his
books a best seller...Delos couldn't let him slip!
By Luigi Pachi
Translated by Kimberley Verburg
Terry Pratchett is among the most popular fantasy authors in England.
Among his output, which has reached about twenty best-sellers, shines the
saga of the Discworld (Mondadori [an Italian publisher - KV.]), novels
inhabiting a strange, flat world that pokes fun at our society by way of
allegory and amusing anecdotes. Terry has recently been mentioned as being
among the 500 richest men in Great Britain (lucky him!) We have approached
him on behalf of our Delos Cyberzine readers to get to know him better.
Delos: Terry, when did you start writing fantasy, and why?
Terry Pratchett: I have always liked science fiction and fantasy. I began
to write in those genres when I was a kid.
Delos: Did you use a particular approach with the publisher who brought
out your first fantasy novel?
Terry Pratchett: Huh? No, nothing like that. I only sent one copy to the
publisher and it was subsequently accepted. I think it was about 1968...
Delos: Where did the main idea for your mad fantasy world come from?
Terry Pratchett: Discworld isn't a crazy world. Or at least, compared to
our world it's quite "sane". I'd say that the Discworld isn't a mad
world, it just seems that way!
Delos: Is there are particular reason why you have decided to write
fantasy with this distinguishing characteristic? Did you perhaps find a
lack of fantasy written in such a way?
Terry Pratchett: I wouldn't know. I only try to write in my own manner, I
believe. I don't have any big ideas in my head when I begin these stories.
I only like to write the types of things that I would like to read.
Delos: Terry, do you think that there is a difference between your
paradoxical fantasy novels and the science fiction works of authors like
Robert Sheckley and Douglas Adams?
Terry Pratchett: I believe that each of us use the "humourous genre" in
the best tradition in our work. The differences (few? many?) that exist
between us are the same one would find in any other group of authors.
Delos: What is the main ingredient in your novels that allows you to
always be on the bestseller lists?
Terry Pratchett: The feedback says that people like a mix made up
principally of humour and philosophy. Apart from that, if it were possible
to isolate the magic ingredient for a best seller we would all be using
it...
Delos: Have you any idea of what your Mondadori sales are in Italy?
Terry Pratchett: No, to be honest. That all passes through so many
people's hands that it is really difficult to get that sort of data.
Delos: Films like Mel Brooks' "Spaceballs", or television series like "Red
Dwarf" can help the public get much more closer to science fiction in a
general sense, or do you think that these programmes are only followed by
a few aficionados?
Terry Pratchett: It's exactly the opposite. These films and programmes are
watched by millions of people (at least in England). But they're not
really about science fiction: in general only the scenery and some science
fiction plots are used.
Delos: Have you got any new things planned for the future?
Terry Pratchett: Lots.
Delos: Are there plans, for example, to bring the saga of the Discworld to
the big screen?
Terry Pratchett: There are always plans of that sort, even if the American
proposals are, in general, not very convincing. In any case, some TV
versions could become concrete soon.
Delos: I recently read in a specialist magazine that you"re bored with the
information highway. Could you explain to our readers what you meant by
that?
Terry Pratchett: I'm not bored, I'm just fed up with all this talk about
nets. Internet is being sold as the magical cure-all. Certainly, the
Internet is fun, but fundamentally it"s only another damned THING. The
future isn't modelled on the Net. To me, someone who really wants to order
a pizza via the Internet is terribly sad.
This text can be read online or offline, and can be distributed without
restriction. The text is, however, the property of the author and cannot
be used for commercial purposes, published in commercial magazines or
placed on a CD-ROM without the prior permission of the author
Vulnerant omnes, ultima necat!
One of the most loved fantasy writers of this generation, every one of his
books a best seller...Delos couldn't let him slip!
By Luigi Pachi
Translated by Kimberley Verburg
Terry Pratchett is among the most popular fantasy authors in England.
Among his output, which has reached about twenty best-sellers, shines the
saga of the Discworld (Mondadori [an Italian publisher - KV.]), novels
inhabiting a strange, flat world that pokes fun at our society by way of
allegory and amusing anecdotes. Terry has recently been mentioned as being
among the 500 richest men in Great Britain (lucky him!) We have approached
him on behalf of our Delos Cyberzine readers to get to know him better.
Delos: Terry, when did you start writing fantasy, and why?
Terry Pratchett: I have always liked science fiction and fantasy. I began
to write in those genres when I was a kid.
Delos: Did you use a particular approach with the publisher who brought
out your first fantasy novel?
Terry Pratchett: Huh? No, nothing like that. I only sent one copy to the
publisher and it was subsequently accepted. I think it was about 1968...
Delos: Where did the main idea for your mad fantasy world come from?
Terry Pratchett: Discworld isn't a crazy world. Or at least, compared to
our world it's quite "sane". I'd say that the Discworld isn't a mad
world, it just seems that way!
Delos: Is there are particular reason why you have decided to write
fantasy with this distinguishing characteristic? Did you perhaps find a
lack of fantasy written in such a way?
Terry Pratchett: I wouldn't know. I only try to write in my own manner, I
believe. I don't have any big ideas in my head when I begin these stories.
I only like to write the types of things that I would like to read.
Delos: Terry, do you think that there is a difference between your
paradoxical fantasy novels and the science fiction works of authors like
Robert Sheckley and Douglas Adams?
Terry Pratchett: I believe that each of us use the "humourous genre" in
the best tradition in our work. The differences (few? many?) that exist
between us are the same one would find in any other group of authors.
Delos: What is the main ingredient in your novels that allows you to
always be on the bestseller lists?
Terry Pratchett: The feedback says that people like a mix made up
principally of humour and philosophy. Apart from that, if it were possible
to isolate the magic ingredient for a best seller we would all be using
it...
Delos: Have you any idea of what your Mondadori sales are in Italy?
Terry Pratchett: No, to be honest. That all passes through so many
people's hands that it is really difficult to get that sort of data.
Delos: Films like Mel Brooks' "Spaceballs", or television series like "Red
Dwarf" can help the public get much more closer to science fiction in a
general sense, or do you think that these programmes are only followed by
a few aficionados?
Terry Pratchett: It's exactly the opposite. These films and programmes are
watched by millions of people (at least in England). But they're not
really about science fiction: in general only the scenery and some science
fiction plots are used.
Delos: Have you got any new things planned for the future?
Terry Pratchett: Lots.
Delos: Are there plans, for example, to bring the saga of the Discworld to
the big screen?
Terry Pratchett: There are always plans of that sort, even if the American
proposals are, in general, not very convincing. In any case, some TV
versions could become concrete soon.
Delos: I recently read in a specialist magazine that you"re bored with the
information highway. Could you explain to our readers what you meant by
that?
Terry Pratchett: I'm not bored, I'm just fed up with all this talk about
nets. Internet is being sold as the magical cure-all. Certainly, the
Internet is fun, but fundamentally it"s only another damned THING. The
future isn't modelled on the Net. To me, someone who really wants to order
a pizza via the Internet is terribly sad.
This text can be read online or offline, and can be distributed without
restriction. The text is, however, the property of the author and cannot
be used for commercial purposes, published in commercial magazines or
placed on a CD-ROM without the prior permission of the author
Vulnerant omnes, ultima necat!
Re: IntervieVVs
Gadget - My Gadget
Pratchett's gadgets that help mould the Discworld - May 1998
In an exclusive interview, Britain's best-selling author and the
planet's leading fantasy writer Terry Pratchett tells Gadget about the
gadgets that help mould his writing...
By ARTHUR GOLDSTUCK (arthurg@is.co.za)
"If I didn't use computers, would you ask me about my pens?" is Terry
Pratchett's testy response to the obvious Gadget question about his
writing tools.
And the answer, frankly Terry, is Yes.*
Eventually, Pratchett succumbs. Perhaps it's the Italian food we're
eating. Perhaps it's the chemicals in the Johannesburg air. It's
certainly not the the fact that this interviewer has been introduced
to him as "a fan". He dreads being asked questions by fans who
remember obscure punchlines long after he has retired them from his
best-selling Discworld series of satirical fantasy novels. Or
questions about his computers.
But persevere, and he begins to wax lyrical.
"If I still used a typewriter, it would be an old old Imperial 58.
That's the one I had most fun with. After that I got an electric
typewriter, but typing a page was so final. You felt you had control
of the Imperial 58; it was purely manual."
"When computers became available I began using a computer immediately.
My first computer was a ZX-81, but I did word processing on it only
for fun. The first computer I used for writing was an Amstrad 464. It
was really a games machine with a tape dr ive built in, so my first
word processor was on a cassette."
Pratchett then "graduated" to the personal computer:
"In the last 10 years I got through six PC's, six portables and a
couple of handhelds. Which is less odd than it sounds, since the real
life of early machines was very short - from the XT to the AT and then
pretty soon the 386, which let one use Wind ows with one window open.
No one would expect an author of my input to use a PC bought 10 years
ago."
"I always had a policy of having two machines to work on and at the
moment it is a low end and a high end Pentium. If one blows up, I want
a maximum of 10 minutes before I am working on the other machine."
Pratchett likes his computing as portable as possible, but is not
wildly impressed with Windows CE. "It looks nice," he says, "but it
just doesn't have the capacity."
Instead, he uses a Toshiba Libretto when travelling.
"The nice thing about the Libretto is that I am writing a novel on it,
I have all my other novels on it and my letters are on it, so if I
need to check on something, I've got it there. With CE you can't have
that. And the Libretto is not much heavie r than a high-end CE. I've
also got a Palm Pilot with me. It's fun and quite useful."
A little more useful, indeed, than Hex, the hilarious, elaborate
computer housed at the Unseen University in the Discworld series.
Although Pratchett might disagree...
Pratchett's gadget put a Hex on his work
Hex is a computer like no other the world has ever seen. Or rather,
that the Discworld has ever seen. For it is the one and only computer
on the bizarre world created by Terry Pratchett, Britain's
best-selling author and the world's favourite fantasy writer.
In the Discworld series, Hex evolves under the watchful eyes of
apprentice wizard Ponder Stibbons, who by default becomes what we
might think of as the IT manager at the Unseen University in the city
of Ankh-Morpork.
As Pratchett puts it in his Christmas send-up, Hogfather, "Hex worried
Ponder Stibbons. He didn't know how it worked, but everyone else
assumed that he did."
Sounds like most IT managers we know, doesn't it? But this is
different: Hex is activated by initialising the GBL, which Stibbons
reluctantly admits stands for "pulling the Great Big Lever". This
releases millions of ants into a network of glass tubing, hence the
sticker on Hex that reads "Anthill inside". And it is all powered by a
waterwheel covered with sheep skulls. That is, male sheep. In other
words, ram.
"Hex is a lot brighter than most computers," says Pratchett,
discussing the properties of this very insane machine in the very sane
light of a Johannesburg afternoon.
In The Last Continent (his new book, set in Australia), Stibbons says
that after he has been working with HEX for a long time, it is easier
to talk to senior wizards, because he has to break every idea into
small bits and mustn't leave any room for ambiguity.
"It always amazes me that people who spend a great deal of time
programming computers don't spend time programming their fellow human
beings."
The inspiration for Hex, which evolves through seemingly unexplainable
upgrades like extra cheese, a CWL (clothes wringer from the laundry)
and "small religious pictures" (i.e. icons), came from Pratchett's own
early experiments with unfathomable upgrades.
"I started off with a ZX-81 which I put together myself. It was very
easy to add things to it. By the time I was finished with it, it had a
speech card, a sound card, and 8 or 9 sensors: a barometer, solar
sensor, temperature sensor and various light sensors. I invented Paged
RAM; effectively, I gave ZX-81 lots and lots of memory, but it could
only access a certain amount of it at one time. It was important that
information was at specific memory locations and stayed there. I had
lots and lots of 2kb memory chips. One program would dump all kinds of
sub-routines on all these RAM chips, and the next routine would run
the whole damn show."
"I no longer knew why that sub-routine was there or what it was doing
there but it was vitally important that it was there. I couldn't
figure out why, except that it stopped working if I took it out."
This Hex prototype still exists today, and would probably be a fine
exhibit in a literary museum, if they ould prize it from Pratchett's
grasp. But he does not share the same respect for it.
"It's still lying in a shed. It's a real rat's nest, and I no longer
know how I got it to work."
Pratchett got the ZX-81 do do things that the computer industry is
still trying to get right in the consumer versions of multimedia PCs
and artificual intelligence. In those early days, the world
"multimedia" did not even exist.
"I would get up and it would sense me when I went into the office and
say good morning, tell me what the weather conditions were, and
whatever the forecast for the day was. It had a wind sensor too. If
you know the wind direction and what the barometer is doing today, and
you have a lookup table, it's not difficult to forecast the weather."
"It had a lovely sound card with the sound of waves breaking. It had
to do things all the time. Eventually thre was too much to do, and
BASIC (the computer language that founded Bill Gates' empire) couldn't
keep up."
He pauses, and with a practised sense of timing that would have done a
stand-up comedian proud, adds: "The voice recognition system was
probably a mistake."
But it did provide inspiration for the Discworld.
"Hex is pretty much the same thing. The wizards are not quite sure why
it works and not sure that everything it's got is what they added. For
instance, someone gave me a box of relays, so relays became part of
the system. I'm not sure why. It was all done with a soldering iron
and a box of spares and a bit of BASIC. Once I stopped using it for a
while, I completely forgot how it worked."
One can never be sure if Pratchett is being serious, but there is no
denying that he has a unique view - if rather a strange one in a way
that would interest the medical fraternity - of the world and the
things in it.
While it is almost comforting to know that our reality helped shape
his lunatic ideas, perhaps we also need to look at it from the
opposite perspective: if the Discworld is inspired by the real world,
we have to question the sanity of our own existence .
As the Unseen University's Archchancellor, Mustrum Ridcully, would
probably say, "Sanity? Now there's an interesting concept. Totally
impractical, of course..."
(* I've asked a Nobel literature laureate who uses a manual typewriter
the same question)
Vulnerant omnes, ultima necat!
Pratchett's gadgets that help mould the Discworld - May 1998
In an exclusive interview, Britain's best-selling author and the
planet's leading fantasy writer Terry Pratchett tells Gadget about the
gadgets that help mould his writing...
By ARTHUR GOLDSTUCK (arthurg@is.co.za)
"If I didn't use computers, would you ask me about my pens?" is Terry
Pratchett's testy response to the obvious Gadget question about his
writing tools.
And the answer, frankly Terry, is Yes.*
Eventually, Pratchett succumbs. Perhaps it's the Italian food we're
eating. Perhaps it's the chemicals in the Johannesburg air. It's
certainly not the the fact that this interviewer has been introduced
to him as "a fan". He dreads being asked questions by fans who
remember obscure punchlines long after he has retired them from his
best-selling Discworld series of satirical fantasy novels. Or
questions about his computers.
But persevere, and he begins to wax lyrical.
"If I still used a typewriter, it would be an old old Imperial 58.
That's the one I had most fun with. After that I got an electric
typewriter, but typing a page was so final. You felt you had control
of the Imperial 58; it was purely manual."
"When computers became available I began using a computer immediately.
My first computer was a ZX-81, but I did word processing on it only
for fun. The first computer I used for writing was an Amstrad 464. It
was really a games machine with a tape dr ive built in, so my first
word processor was on a cassette."
Pratchett then "graduated" to the personal computer:
"In the last 10 years I got through six PC's, six portables and a
couple of handhelds. Which is less odd than it sounds, since the real
life of early machines was very short - from the XT to the AT and then
pretty soon the 386, which let one use Wind ows with one window open.
No one would expect an author of my input to use a PC bought 10 years
ago."
"I always had a policy of having two machines to work on and at the
moment it is a low end and a high end Pentium. If one blows up, I want
a maximum of 10 minutes before I am working on the other machine."
Pratchett likes his computing as portable as possible, but is not
wildly impressed with Windows CE. "It looks nice," he says, "but it
just doesn't have the capacity."
Instead, he uses a Toshiba Libretto when travelling.
"The nice thing about the Libretto is that I am writing a novel on it,
I have all my other novels on it and my letters are on it, so if I
need to check on something, I've got it there. With CE you can't have
that. And the Libretto is not much heavie r than a high-end CE. I've
also got a Palm Pilot with me. It's fun and quite useful."
A little more useful, indeed, than Hex, the hilarious, elaborate
computer housed at the Unseen University in the Discworld series.
Although Pratchett might disagree...
Pratchett's gadget put a Hex on his work
Hex is a computer like no other the world has ever seen. Or rather,
that the Discworld has ever seen. For it is the one and only computer
on the bizarre world created by Terry Pratchett, Britain's
best-selling author and the world's favourite fantasy writer.
In the Discworld series, Hex evolves under the watchful eyes of
apprentice wizard Ponder Stibbons, who by default becomes what we
might think of as the IT manager at the Unseen University in the city
of Ankh-Morpork.
As Pratchett puts it in his Christmas send-up, Hogfather, "Hex worried
Ponder Stibbons. He didn't know how it worked, but everyone else
assumed that he did."
Sounds like most IT managers we know, doesn't it? But this is
different: Hex is activated by initialising the GBL, which Stibbons
reluctantly admits stands for "pulling the Great Big Lever". This
releases millions of ants into a network of glass tubing, hence the
sticker on Hex that reads "Anthill inside". And it is all powered by a
waterwheel covered with sheep skulls. That is, male sheep. In other
words, ram.
"Hex is a lot brighter than most computers," says Pratchett,
discussing the properties of this very insane machine in the very sane
light of a Johannesburg afternoon.
In The Last Continent (his new book, set in Australia), Stibbons says
that after he has been working with HEX for a long time, it is easier
to talk to senior wizards, because he has to break every idea into
small bits and mustn't leave any room for ambiguity.
"It always amazes me that people who spend a great deal of time
programming computers don't spend time programming their fellow human
beings."
The inspiration for Hex, which evolves through seemingly unexplainable
upgrades like extra cheese, a CWL (clothes wringer from the laundry)
and "small religious pictures" (i.e. icons), came from Pratchett's own
early experiments with unfathomable upgrades.
"I started off with a ZX-81 which I put together myself. It was very
easy to add things to it. By the time I was finished with it, it had a
speech card, a sound card, and 8 or 9 sensors: a barometer, solar
sensor, temperature sensor and various light sensors. I invented Paged
RAM; effectively, I gave ZX-81 lots and lots of memory, but it could
only access a certain amount of it at one time. It was important that
information was at specific memory locations and stayed there. I had
lots and lots of 2kb memory chips. One program would dump all kinds of
sub-routines on all these RAM chips, and the next routine would run
the whole damn show."
"I no longer knew why that sub-routine was there or what it was doing
there but it was vitally important that it was there. I couldn't
figure out why, except that it stopped working if I took it out."
This Hex prototype still exists today, and would probably be a fine
exhibit in a literary museum, if they ould prize it from Pratchett's
grasp. But he does not share the same respect for it.
"It's still lying in a shed. It's a real rat's nest, and I no longer
know how I got it to work."
Pratchett got the ZX-81 do do things that the computer industry is
still trying to get right in the consumer versions of multimedia PCs
and artificual intelligence. In those early days, the world
"multimedia" did not even exist.
"I would get up and it would sense me when I went into the office and
say good morning, tell me what the weather conditions were, and
whatever the forecast for the day was. It had a wind sensor too. If
you know the wind direction and what the barometer is doing today, and
you have a lookup table, it's not difficult to forecast the weather."
"It had a lovely sound card with the sound of waves breaking. It had
to do things all the time. Eventually thre was too much to do, and
BASIC (the computer language that founded Bill Gates' empire) couldn't
keep up."
He pauses, and with a practised sense of timing that would have done a
stand-up comedian proud, adds: "The voice recognition system was
probably a mistake."
But it did provide inspiration for the Discworld.
"Hex is pretty much the same thing. The wizards are not quite sure why
it works and not sure that everything it's got is what they added. For
instance, someone gave me a box of relays, so relays became part of
the system. I'm not sure why. It was all done with a soldering iron
and a box of spares and a bit of BASIC. Once I stopped using it for a
while, I completely forgot how it worked."
One can never be sure if Pratchett is being serious, but there is no
denying that he has a unique view - if rather a strange one in a way
that would interest the medical fraternity - of the world and the
things in it.
While it is almost comforting to know that our reality helped shape
his lunatic ideas, perhaps we also need to look at it from the
opposite perspective: if the Discworld is inspired by the real world,
we have to question the sanity of our own existence .
As the Unseen University's Archchancellor, Mustrum Ridcully, would
probably say, "Sanity? Now there's an interesting concept. Totally
impractical, of course..."
(* I've asked a Nobel literature laureate who uses a manual typewriter
the same question)
Vulnerant omnes, ultima necat!
Re: IntervieVVs
Terry Pratchett's Discworld
On Soul Music; dealing with fame and weaving fantasies.
My introduction to Terry Pratchett startles me. I had expected this
author of over thirty popular fantasy books to be somehow larger than
life. The PR photos I've seen of him have reinforced epic proportions.
In these photos he is always behatted, usually astride a large
motorcycle and generally looking formidable in a friendly sort of way.
In person Pratchett is not less as much as he is different. I am
struck initially at how very pink and silver he seems. And his voice
is not the booming well-modulated British accent I'd expected: echoes
of Jean-Luc Picard. Pratchett's voice is closer to an English Elmer
Fudd than Star Fleet.
The revelations of his actual appearance are not disappointing. He
looks, in fact, very much like a character he might have written
himself. One of the funny inhabitants of Discworld, the land that
Pratchett has created and that has been the home base for over 20 of
his 30 novels.
The novel he is promoting when I interview him is Soul Music, the 16th
of the Discworld novels, it had just been released in paperback. Since
the book's hard cover release Pratchett has completed several more
Discworld novels, including Interesting Times and Maskarade.
Soul Music follows the adventures of Susan, the natural granddaughter
of Death. At 16 years of age, Susan is taken from the forgetfulness of
boarding school on a huge, powerful and magical white horse named
Binky. The horse, together with the Death of Rats, have searched her
out because Death has disappeared and left no one to take his place.
Binky brings her to her grandfather's home where she begins to
remember her past and quickly finds that she must take up Death's
duties, for there truly is no one else.
Described by some as a less serious and more hilarious Hitchhiker's
Guide to the Galaxy, the Discworld is a semi-mediaeval society that is
positioned on a flat world -- the Disc in question, of course -- that
rests on the back of four giant elephants which in turn rest on the
back of a giant turtle who walks endlessly through the interstellar
night.
Sound preposterous? It is. Entirely. Which accounts for a large
portion of the Discworld novels' charm and popularity.
Born in 1948, Pratchett lives with his wife Lyn and their 20-year-old
daughter Rhianna in a "small manor house," in the village of Wiltshire
in England. "I have to specify 'small' when I say manor house when I'm
in North America. It's not a castle." Castle or no, the structure is a
six bedroom home that is "about 1000 years old."
The move was a good one, for many reasons. At least one, though, is
that it's more off the beaten track than the house they used to live
in in Somerset. "I'd get people on my door with bags of books and
such. It was sometimes unnerving."
Between regular mail and e-mail, Pratchett gets about 60 letters a day
from his fans. "Most of it is wonderful. I enjoy it very much. But one
in every 100 letters or so makes me realize I'm not sorry to be a
little harder to find. Although my publishers tell me that the mail I
get is a lot tamer than most of the stuff that goes to your average
romance novelist."
Despite these gentle protestations, Pratchett acknowledges that he
loves his fans and enjoys meeting them and hearing what they think of
his book. "I get paid a huge wad of cash to do what I like to do
anyway," Pratchett says of his work. "My fans are everything to me."
And there's a lot of fans. There have been over six million Discworld
books sold in 15 different languages worldwide. Each new title sells
in excess of 400,000 paperbacks and 40,000 hard cover copies in the
U.K. alone. Pratchett regularly holds the top slots in both the
paperback and hard cover lists in Great Britain where his sales rank
him alongside the likes of Catherine Cookson and Frederick Forsyth.
His sales in North America are less awe-inspiring, but he has cadres
of fans among whom he has practically been canonized. Fan clubs,
usenet newsgroups on the Internet and a half score of Internet Web
sites dedicated to him and his books have contributed to making
Pratchett's Discworld an international phenomena.
Luckily, his prolific tendencies keep his fans fueled with tales of
the Discworld. "Writing is my base state of being," he says. "I just
got myself in the habit of writing," and though he finds his life too
hectic to manage a writing schedule these days, he "writes when there
isn't anything else I have to do."
He talks easily about his art and the way he's managed to make the
inhabitants of the Discworld -- a place that is entirely unbelievable
-- believable to so many people.
"You describe a character by the shape they leave in the world," says
Pratchett. "It's not the way they look. It's their looks. Their
silences. The character description is not the color of the eyes as
much as the way they turn their heads."
Pratchett tells me that the six children's books he's written -- all
published by Doubleday and Corgi -- were done to gain legitimacy as a
writer. "I wanted to be invited to the best class of writer's
functions," he explains seriously though it should be understood that
Terry Pratchett is seldom more than half serious. "It pisses me off
that fantasy is unregarded as a literary form. When you think about
it, fantasy is the oldest form of fiction. What were the storytellers
of old doing when they talked about the beginnings of the world? They
were weaving fantasies."
Weaving fantasies is just what Pratchett does best. "The Discworld was
created as an antidote to all those trilogies whose worthy heroes
stagger across three volumes in order to do whatever it is that the
fates have decreed that a hero must do." The first of the series was
The Colour of Magic which came out in hard cover in 1983. This was
followed quickly by The Light Fantastic in 1984. These earliest
Discworld novels, Pratchett maintains, were farces. "I guess you could
say that the history of the Discworld is my own history as a writer."
Finer points in plot structure, characterization and timing was
something Pratchett developed as he went along. Pratchett feels this
is something that is apparent in the books themselves. "The earlier
books were fun. There is more skill in the later books. Though,
they're still fun, of course."
The later books, including Soul Music, deal somewhat more maturely
with their topics than the earlier novels did. They still bear the
mark of Pratchett's humor, however. "An awful lot of our existence is
funny," he says. "But there's no good having comedy if there's no
tragedy, is there?"
The obvious question is -- of course-- the one that gets no proper
answer. There have been 20 Discworld books in 14 years. How many might
we expect to see? "Let's see," Pratchett says thoughtfully with just
the hint of a smile. "My father lived to be 97. I figure I've got time
for a few more. Though really, sometimes I think there will come a
time when the Discworld is simply filled up. If that happens, I'll
stop.
Thus far, there doesn't look like there's a great danger of this
happening.
Vulnerant omnes, ultima necat!
On Soul Music; dealing with fame and weaving fantasies.
My introduction to Terry Pratchett startles me. I had expected this
author of over thirty popular fantasy books to be somehow larger than
life. The PR photos I've seen of him have reinforced epic proportions.
In these photos he is always behatted, usually astride a large
motorcycle and generally looking formidable in a friendly sort of way.
In person Pratchett is not less as much as he is different. I am
struck initially at how very pink and silver he seems. And his voice
is not the booming well-modulated British accent I'd expected: echoes
of Jean-Luc Picard. Pratchett's voice is closer to an English Elmer
Fudd than Star Fleet.
The revelations of his actual appearance are not disappointing. He
looks, in fact, very much like a character he might have written
himself. One of the funny inhabitants of Discworld, the land that
Pratchett has created and that has been the home base for over 20 of
his 30 novels.
The novel he is promoting when I interview him is Soul Music, the 16th
of the Discworld novels, it had just been released in paperback. Since
the book's hard cover release Pratchett has completed several more
Discworld novels, including Interesting Times and Maskarade.
Soul Music follows the adventures of Susan, the natural granddaughter
of Death. At 16 years of age, Susan is taken from the forgetfulness of
boarding school on a huge, powerful and magical white horse named
Binky. The horse, together with the Death of Rats, have searched her
out because Death has disappeared and left no one to take his place.
Binky brings her to her grandfather's home where she begins to
remember her past and quickly finds that she must take up Death's
duties, for there truly is no one else.
Described by some as a less serious and more hilarious Hitchhiker's
Guide to the Galaxy, the Discworld is a semi-mediaeval society that is
positioned on a flat world -- the Disc in question, of course -- that
rests on the back of four giant elephants which in turn rest on the
back of a giant turtle who walks endlessly through the interstellar
night.
Sound preposterous? It is. Entirely. Which accounts for a large
portion of the Discworld novels' charm and popularity.
Born in 1948, Pratchett lives with his wife Lyn and their 20-year-old
daughter Rhianna in a "small manor house," in the village of Wiltshire
in England. "I have to specify 'small' when I say manor house when I'm
in North America. It's not a castle." Castle or no, the structure is a
six bedroom home that is "about 1000 years old."
The move was a good one, for many reasons. At least one, though, is
that it's more off the beaten track than the house they used to live
in in Somerset. "I'd get people on my door with bags of books and
such. It was sometimes unnerving."
Between regular mail and e-mail, Pratchett gets about 60 letters a day
from his fans. "Most of it is wonderful. I enjoy it very much. But one
in every 100 letters or so makes me realize I'm not sorry to be a
little harder to find. Although my publishers tell me that the mail I
get is a lot tamer than most of the stuff that goes to your average
romance novelist."
Despite these gentle protestations, Pratchett acknowledges that he
loves his fans and enjoys meeting them and hearing what they think of
his book. "I get paid a huge wad of cash to do what I like to do
anyway," Pratchett says of his work. "My fans are everything to me."
And there's a lot of fans. There have been over six million Discworld
books sold in 15 different languages worldwide. Each new title sells
in excess of 400,000 paperbacks and 40,000 hard cover copies in the
U.K. alone. Pratchett regularly holds the top slots in both the
paperback and hard cover lists in Great Britain where his sales rank
him alongside the likes of Catherine Cookson and Frederick Forsyth.
His sales in North America are less awe-inspiring, but he has cadres
of fans among whom he has practically been canonized. Fan clubs,
usenet newsgroups on the Internet and a half score of Internet Web
sites dedicated to him and his books have contributed to making
Pratchett's Discworld an international phenomena.
Luckily, his prolific tendencies keep his fans fueled with tales of
the Discworld. "Writing is my base state of being," he says. "I just
got myself in the habit of writing," and though he finds his life too
hectic to manage a writing schedule these days, he "writes when there
isn't anything else I have to do."
He talks easily about his art and the way he's managed to make the
inhabitants of the Discworld -- a place that is entirely unbelievable
-- believable to so many people.
"You describe a character by the shape they leave in the world," says
Pratchett. "It's not the way they look. It's their looks. Their
silences. The character description is not the color of the eyes as
much as the way they turn their heads."
Pratchett tells me that the six children's books he's written -- all
published by Doubleday and Corgi -- were done to gain legitimacy as a
writer. "I wanted to be invited to the best class of writer's
functions," he explains seriously though it should be understood that
Terry Pratchett is seldom more than half serious. "It pisses me off
that fantasy is unregarded as a literary form. When you think about
it, fantasy is the oldest form of fiction. What were the storytellers
of old doing when they talked about the beginnings of the world? They
were weaving fantasies."
Weaving fantasies is just what Pratchett does best. "The Discworld was
created as an antidote to all those trilogies whose worthy heroes
stagger across three volumes in order to do whatever it is that the
fates have decreed that a hero must do." The first of the series was
The Colour of Magic which came out in hard cover in 1983. This was
followed quickly by The Light Fantastic in 1984. These earliest
Discworld novels, Pratchett maintains, were farces. "I guess you could
say that the history of the Discworld is my own history as a writer."
Finer points in plot structure, characterization and timing was
something Pratchett developed as he went along. Pratchett feels this
is something that is apparent in the books themselves. "The earlier
books were fun. There is more skill in the later books. Though,
they're still fun, of course."
The later books, including Soul Music, deal somewhat more maturely
with their topics than the earlier novels did. They still bear the
mark of Pratchett's humor, however. "An awful lot of our existence is
funny," he says. "But there's no good having comedy if there's no
tragedy, is there?"
The obvious question is -- of course-- the one that gets no proper
answer. There have been 20 Discworld books in 14 years. How many might
we expect to see? "Let's see," Pratchett says thoughtfully with just
the hint of a smile. "My father lived to be 97. I figure I've got time
for a few more. Though really, sometimes I think there will come a
time when the Discworld is simply filled up. If that happens, I'll
stop.
Thus far, there doesn't look like there's a great danger of this
happening.
Vulnerant omnes, ultima necat!
...:: ^..^ ::...
Daite i vie neshto - niakoe interviu, niakoi prevod na proizvolno izbrano interviu - abe s dve dumi VSE NESHTO!
Ne iskam da vi kazvam, che samo vzimate bez da davate, ot edna strana, zashto si znaete, a ot druga - zashto i vie ne iskate da vi kazvam.
Priaten den!
Vulnerant omnes, ultima necat!
Ne iskam da vi kazvam, che samo vzimate bez da davate, ot edna strana, zashto si znaete, a ot druga - zashto i vie ne iskate da vi kazvam.
Priaten den!
Vulnerant omnes, ultima necat!
