June 2007

Terry Pratchett to attend U.S. National Book Festival

30 June 2007 (21:08) Comment!

The press release of the 7^th United States National Book Festival, to be held September 29 in Washington D.C., includes Terry Pratchett in its list of participating authors under the “Fiction and Fantasy” category.  The free, open-to-the-public festival, organized by the Library of Congress and hosted by Laura Bush, is a “celebration of the joy of reading and the creativity of America’s writers and illustrators,” in the words of Librarian of Congress James H. Billington.  Terry Pratchett is among about 70 well-known writers and illustrators who will be participating, including Mercer Mayer, Rosemary Wells, Gail Carson Levine, Gene Luen Yang, Joyce Carol Oates, and Lalita Tademy.  Participating writers will give presentations, sign books, read excerpts, and answer questions from audience members.

We’re now at FromRimToHub.com

30 June 2007 (2:47) 1 Comment

We’re proud to announce our new domain name!  At fromrimtohub.com you’ll find all our content (which right now consists of current news, older news, and ancient news.  A little limited, we’ll admit, but thanks to WordPress, you can now sort the news items by category!)

Okay, it’s not that exciting.  But bookmark our page and visit often.  We’d love your support!

Ian Stewart on writing popular science

29 June 2007 (15:04) Comment!

Ian Stewart, co-author of the Science of Discworld books, has given the Guardian Unlimited an interesting insight into being a popular science writer. He says:

“If it so happens that on page 175 there is some statement which technically is actually incorrect,” he continues, “or it’s incorrect because it’s been simplified - and there’s a fine line between simplifying things and oversimplifying things - I honestly don’t mind that much, because I don’t think that has a big effect on getting the main message over.” Readers can always look it up on the internet or ask an expert. “When you unwrap some casual sentence in a popular science book you find hidden depths, which range from ‘everybody says this but it’s not true’ to ‘this is incredibly controversial and nobody knows what’s going on’.”

Additionally, Stewart lauds Terry Pratchett’s storytelling influence on his own writing. To quote the article:

His prose is gradually becoming more relaxed, with a chattier, dressed-down tone and wry asides, a development he puts down to his collaborations with Terry Pratchett and Jack Cohen on a series of books about science in Discworld.

“I learnt a lot of this from Terry Pratchett,” he says. Pratchett is a mine of information about how to tell stories, and in working with him you pick this stuff up. “If you get it wrong he will tell you,” Stewart laughs. “It changes your view of what you’re trying to do and how you’re trying to do it.” When starting a book he used to ask “What’s the interesting stuff I ought to be covering?”, now his question is “What’s the story?” The story comes first, and the mathematics is chosen to fit.

Ian Stewart has collaborated with Terry Pratchett and Jack Cohen on the Science of Discworld books (the most recent of which is the Science of Discworld III: Darwin’s Watch).

Two future Pratchett TV Adaptations in line?

28 June 2007 (14:12) 1 Comment

While Terry Pratchett has confirmed that one more Discworld TV dramatization is in the works, a Daily Mail article mentions that David Jason has “an existing commitment to appear in two more bigbudget Terry Pratchett dramatisations” (emphasis added). However exciting this news may be, readers should remember that the Daily Mail is a tabloid, and therefore can’t be wholly trusted.

Terry Pratchett has confirmed that he is now working on a TV script that combines stories from The Color of Magic and The Light Fantastic.

Quote: “Luck is my middle name …

27 June 2007 (21:46) Comment!

“Luck is my middle name … Mind you, my first name is Bad.”

-Rincewind, Interesting Times (Terry Pratchett)

Wintersmith wins 2007 Locus Award

26 June 2007 (10:06) Comment!

As we reported earlier, the winners of the 2007 Locus Awards were announced June 16, in Seattle. Locus magazine readers, we’re proud to say, voted Wintersmith (third in the Tiffany Aching series) the best Young Adult Book. This is Terry Pratchett’s third award in the same category, as both of Wintersmith’s prequels received the same honor. Pratchett beat out two other well-known children’s fantasy authors, Garth Nix and Ursula K. Le Guin, for the award.

Quote: “A foot on the neck …

25 June 2007 (21:39) Comment!

“A foot on the neck is nine points of the law.”

-Interesting Times (Terry Pratchett)

Quote: “[Y]ou couldn’t do proper maths …

24 June 2007 (21:37) Comment!

“[Y]ou couldn’t do proper maths without the number 0, which wasn’t a number at all but, if it went away, would leave a lot of larger numbers looking bloody stupid.”

-Interesting Times (Terry Pratchett)

Quote: “May you …

23 June 2007 (21:35) 1 Comment

“May you live in interesting times.”

-Interesting Times (Terry Pratchett)

Quote: “Inexperienced travelers …

22 June 2007 (21:33) Comment!

“Inexperienced travelers might think that ‘Aargh!’ is universal, but in Betrobi it means “highly enjoyable” and in Howondaland it means, variously, ‘I would like to eat your foot,’ ‘Your wife is a big hippo,’ and ‘Hello, Thinks Mr. Purple Cat.’ One particular tribe has a fearsome reputation for cruelty merely because prisoners appear, to them, to be shouting ‘Quick! Extra boiling oil!’”

-Interesting Times (Terry Pratchett)

Quote: “[A]nything people had time …

21 June 2007 (21:31) Comment!

“[A]nything people had time to write down couldn’t be important.”

-Interesting Times (Terry Pratchett)

Quote: “[H]e suffered from pre-emptive karma …

20 June 2007 (21:28) Comment!

“[H]e suffered from pre-emptive karma. If it even looked as though something nice was going to happen to him in the near future, something bad would happen right now. And it went on happening to him right through the part where the good stuff should be happening, so that he never actually experienced it. It was as if he always got the indigestion before the meal and felt so dreadful that he never actually managed to eat anything.”

-Intersting Times (Terry Pratchett)

Quote: “Adventure! People talked about …

19 June 2007 (21:26) Comment!

“Adventure! People talked about the idea as if it was something worthwhile, rather than a mess of bad food, no sleep, and strange people inexplicably trying to stick pointed objects in bits of you.”

-Interesting Times (Terry Pratchett)

Quote: “He hadn’t been frightened …

18 June 2007 (21:25) Comment!

“He hadn’t been frightened, because he didn’t have the imagination.”

-Interesting Times (Terry Pratchett)

Quote: “Wizards had always known …

17 June 2007 (21:21) Comment!

“Wizards had always known that the act of observation changed the thing that was observed, and sometimes forgot that it also changed the observer, too.”

-Interesting Times (Terry Pratchett)

Terry Pratchett knighthood petition closed

16 June 2007 (21:19) Comment!

On the UK Government’s official e-petition site, the petition to award Terry Pratchett knighthood (for services to literature) has garnered 1, 361 signatures since we first told you about the petition.  Today, at a total of 2, 142 signatures, we’re optimistic that Terry Pratchett will be awarded knighthood.  Although it is too late to add your support, you can see the list of other signers at the link above.

Reminder: Wintersmith’s possible Locus win

15 June 2007 (21:18) Comment!

Soon we will find out how Wintersmith (third in the Tiffany Aching series, by Terry Pratchett) fared in the 2007 Locus Awards, at the awards ceremony (to be held June 16 in Seattle). Readers should be reminded that the award was a voters’ choice award, though voting is closed and the winners in each category are already determined, though unannounced. The possible winners in the Young Adult Book category (for which Wintersmith is competing) include Sir Thursday (Garth Nix) and Voices (Ursula K. Le Guin).

Only You Can Save Mankind! Or, maybe, Johnny Maxwell can.

14 June 2007 (21:13) Comment!

Continuing it’s broadcasting of Terry Pratchett, BBC7 is now playing a dramatization of Only You Can Save Mankind, a Johnny Maxwell novel. The three half-hour episodes play 6:00 p.m. GMT (Monday through Wednesday) and 12:00 a.m. GMT (Tuesday through Thursday). Use BBC7’s Listen again feature if you miss the broadcast.