The Watch

Announcing Sir Terry (Article Updated And Revised)

31 December 2008 (20:40) Comment!

Queen Elizabeth II’s annual New Year honors list includes Terry Pratchett, who was named a Knight Bachelor for services to literature earlier today (Wednesday in the U.K.).

Pratchett has previously been named an Officer Of The British Empire (OBE).

This comes after a failed petition in August 2007 to award Pratchett the honor of knighthood.

Terry Pratchett responded to the announcement by saying, “there are times when phrases such as ‘totally astonished’ just don’t do the job….I am of course delighted and honored and — needless to say — flabbergasted.”

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New Discworld miniatures of Death, Weatherwax, Vimes, Ogg, Rincewind

27 December 2008 (17:45) Comment!

Micro Art Studio is now issuing a series of Discworld miniatures. Miniatures of Death, Granny Weatherwax, Sam Vimes, Nanny Ogg, and Rincewind are already available.

Miniatures of Nobby Nobbs and the Luggage are planned.

The miniatures are based on the artwork of Paul Kidby. According to Micro Art Studio, the miniatures are “30 mm scale high quality metal cast” miniatures and are sold unpainted.

Terry Pratchett on With Great Pleasure: Recording available

25 December 2008 (13:03) Comment!

Today at 12:00 in England BBC Radio 4 aired a special holiday edition of their program With Great Pleasure, which featured Terry Pratchett and some of his favorite pieces of writing.

A recording of the fifty-three minute show is available via BBC’s Listen Again feature, however the BBC site requires Real Player to play. (For those who are worried about Real Player’s security holes and intrusive nature, Real Alternative is an open-source software that many users use as an alternative.) (This is in no way an endorsement. Don’t blame us if installing either piece of software causes problems with your computer.)

From Rim To Hub has a high quality mp3 file of the program that you can download and play anywhere with any software.
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Four Discworld novels in Amazon’s Hall Of Fame

24 December 2008 (17:34) Comment!

Amazon looks back on the ten years since it started (and subsequently became a book sales juggernaut) with a Hall Of Fame listing the yearly top ten bestsellers, and four of Terry Pratchett’s Discworld novels make it onto the lists.

Carpe Jugulum is the fourth bestselling title for 1998, The Fifth Elephant is the eighth bestselling title for 1999, Night Watch is the second bestselling title for 2002, and Monstrous Regiment is the seventh bestselling title for 2003.

Other books in the Hall Of Fame are the Harry Potter books, Who Moved My Cheese?, The God Delusion, The Time Traveler’s Wife, and The Kite Runner.

Retro News: Pratchett on Washington Post chat (01 Oct. 2008)

13 December 2008 (17:30) Comment!

Terry Pratchett chatted with Washington Post readers on Wednesday, Oct. 1st on Book World Live for a discussion about his most recent children’s book, Nation. To quote the full transcript:

Terry Pratchett: Hello, it’s Terry Pratchett, here to talk about my book Nation, and anything else. Except cookery, or mathematics. I’d like to start by thanking the Washington Post for the wonderful review in Book World. It’s nice when people spot the little twiddly bits. I was pleased to see that. The reviews have been very encouraging around the globe.

Houston, TX : How did you get the idea for Nation?

Terry Pratchett: I wish I knew, because if I did I would go back to the same place with a bucket. The initial idea and the image of Mau standing on the beach defying his gods came to me instantly, late in 2003, and it hung around for a long time…. what I originally had in mind was something like the explosion of Krakatoa, and the shipwreck of the Sweet Judy is very loosely based on a real event that happened after the volcano exploded.

Woodbridge, Va.: The Washington Post review of your book says that it deals with “fundamental questions about religious belief.” Are you a man of faith?

Terry Pratchett: Certainly I have no faith in Jehovah, although I think it quite likely that Jesus Christ, as a preacher and a wise man, did indeed exist. I think possibly the ending of Nation pretty much outlines what I think. Indeed, the whole of Nation outlines what I think, which is that if you do your best for your fellow man, then the issue of the gods is somewhat superfluous.

Falls Church, Va: … I have two questions: What is your favorite Discworld Book? More importantly, how young an adult is your “Young Adult Novel” appropriate for? My 12 year old son is a decent reader for a 7th grader. Do you think the book would be appropriate for him?

Terry Pratchett: I would say that I have done my best writing in the Tiffany Aching series, which are technically Discworld books, although they are meant for children.

Among the adult books, Nightwatch [sic] must be my favourite.

The question of age and suitability is a hot one here in the UK, where authors are banding together to stop publishers’ age-banding children’s/YA books. That is to say, they want to include advice like “suitable for a child of 7 1/2″ on the cover of the book. The reason this is a very hit-and-miss message is that it all depends on the child. I think I had read all the James Bond books that were available by the time I was 12, and you have to remember that a book like Pilgrim’s Progress was once considered a perfect Sunday afternoon for children of 7 or so. If a kid is bright and questioning, and really interested in the world, they will find a lot for them in Nation. Equally, I imagine there’s one or 2 adults that won’t get it!

Gaithersburg, MD: How are you feeling?

Terry Pratchett: I’m feeling good.

I think I feel a question that no one is quite asking here.

Yes, I have PCA, which is a rare variant of Alzheimer’s. Right now, its main effect on me is to mess up my typing skills, and also to make my spelling inaccurate — I mean to the point where I might actually fail to remember how to spell a simple 5-letter word just as I am about to type it. these [sic] things are a nuisance, and certainly slow down my work rate. But to some extent, technology can help. There is no cure. PCA is a strange thing, and no one is taking any guesses about how long I shall be able to keep working like this. My personal view is that the sheer grind of writing will get me down long before there’s still plenty of room for me to enjoy things in life. Oddly enough, the ability to plot and invent dialogue and characters seems to be totally untouched. It is worth pointing out that Nation, in its entirety, was written by a guy with PCA. I did not know that I had it until the late fall of last year, but throughout that year I had been putting down the problems of typing, etc. to other things, senior moments and just general aging. To put it bluntly, you would have to know me very well, and possibly even be familiar with PCA, to suspect that I was anything other than an average 60-year old guy.

Wallace, N.C: You once wrote a short story about a female King Arthur (Queen Ursula) and Mervin (a geeky Merlin). Have you ever thought about returning to that particular story and finding out how the Table is different? (Speaking as a huge female fan of Arthurian legend, I have always wondered what would happen after Ursula pulled the sword out of the stone! She was a very impressive character.)

Terry Pratchett: Thank you! I was very pleased with that short story and had planned, which circumstances are likely to derail, to extend it into a novel. Since Merlin was a time traveller, I did wonder if we would end up with something like an Elizabethan age several centuries ahead of its time. There are so many ways it could have gone. Nevertheless, it was quite good fun doing it as a straight short story, just to introduce the idea.

Washington, D.C.: You hail from the nation that built a global colonial empire, but also wrote the Magna Carta and fought both Napoleon and Hitler. One theme that seems to run through many of your novels is the conception that good is relative but evil is the absolute inability to care about other living things, be they golems, people, or cats. Are there any specific religious beliefs, philosophical texts, or life events that shaped this conviction?

Terry Pratchett: See my earlier answer about being a reader. It was SF and fantasy that got me reading, and SF writers in particular have pack rat minds. They introduce all sorts of interesting themes and ideas into their books, and so for me it was a short leap to go from the F and SF genres to folklore, mythology, ancient history and philosophy. I did not read philosophy because I set out to become a philosopher; I read it because it looked interesting. All I am really promoting in the books is the Golden Rule, which I hope everybody knows to be “do as you would be done by.” It has one or 2 flaws, but it is a good soundbite. Evil starts when you treat other people as things. There are perhaps worse crimes, but they begin when you treat other people as things.

Manchester, UK: When I had the pleasure of meeting you at the DWCON in Birmingham this year, you said you were a little unsure of the book on the whole - you weren’t sure whether to tweak it somewhat, etc, and what the reaction from your fans was going to be with it being so completely unlike anything you’ve done before. After Nation was released and became a top seller (again!) and the reviews have been wonderful - Do you feel any differently towards it now?

Terry Pratchett: … Somebody once said that books are not finished, they just escape. I probably spent five months doing the final rewrites and edits of Nation. It was so long because I tend to be very “big brush” on the early drafts. I look at it now and see places where I could have improved it, but in reality, I would probably have had to put in 100% more work for 1% improvement.

Philadelphia, Pa.: Do you have a writing process? About how long do you think about your storyline before you put it down on paper? How much of writing is rewriting?

Terry Pratchett: Good one. Nation was written in a very strange way. I was doing draft 5 of the first few chapters when I was on draft 1 of the ending. In a sense, it was written in a way more suitable to painting; in effect I was working on the whole thing all the time.

Generally I start writing when I have even the smallest idea of how a book is going to go, because the physical process of writing itself keeps the mind active and focused on the job at hand. Usually I write in about 5 drafts, but that simply means there are 5 definite times when I go in a linear fashion from the beginning to the end of the book.

Terry Pratchett also talked about his Alzheimer’s and a book he is currently working on, which he says is set on the Discworld and follows an almost completely new suite of characters.

Warning: Do not buy Discworld novels from Hill House, Publishers until further notice

1 May 2008 (19:53) 5 Comments

Hill House’s proposed facsimile editions of the first twelve Discworld novels, advertised since at least 2005, will probably not be published, according to Terry Pratchett’s agent Colin Smythe.

The new editions were supposed to reproduce the early Discworld novels “in exact facsimile editions,” with the use of identical binding, paper, type, and jacket art as the originals. The books were due to be published about every four months and since 2005 only The Colour Of Magic and The Light Fantastic have been published.

Terry Pratchett’s literary agent Colin Smythe responded to questions with “as far as I’m aware, the owner of Hill House, Publishers Peter Schneider has been ill and as it’s a one man operation I don’t believe that he’s going to publish any more of the facsimiles. It’s a considerable disappointment.”

Discworld fans should be warned that the series of facsimiles is still being advertised on the site, with no mention of these concerns.

“I … paid the company $210 for the first six titles–[which] sounded like a good deal,” said one fan, whose complaint brought the situation to light. “As of [April 2008] only two books have been published. At $105 per book this doesn’t sound like as good a deal.”

He had emailed Hill House repeatedly, with no response and no refund.

Dress up and win an iPod and every Discworld audiobook

20 March 2008 (20:16) 1 Comment

TimesOnline.co.uk is offering a contest to celebrate the 25th anniversary of The Colour Of Magic, the first novel in the Discworld series. To win, send a photograph of “yourself dressed as your favourite Pratchett character” to books@timesonline.co.uk and explain why he or she is your favorite character.  Things to note about the contest:

• Only residents of the U.K. and Eire aged 16 and over are eligible.
• Each person is allowed only one entry.
• Include “Pratchett” in the subject of your entry.
• The email should include the picture of yourself dressed up, the name of your character, why he or she is your favorite (in less than 50 words), your name, your age, your phone number, and your email address.
• The photograph must be in jpeg format and less than 10 megabytes.  Dimension specifications: “a minimum pixel width of 450 for landscape photographs or 450 pixels for portrait photos.”
• The deadline is midday May 19, 2008.

 The full terms and conditions can also be found on the site.

Bath Literature Festival report

26 February 2008 (16:45) Comment!

Terry Pratchett’s appearance at the literature festival in Bath last weekend was attended by fellow Discworld fan Sarah Brett (whose blog can be found here), and she has graciously agreed to let FromRimToHub.com publish a report of the event, which follows.

Yesterday evening I had the pleasure of seeing Terry Pratchett speaking at The Forum in Bath. He was “in conversation” with Sarah LeFanu (Art Director of the Festival) and the subject of the evening was ‘25 years of Discworld’. This was only the second time I had seen him in the flesh, the first being at a book signing at Ottakers in Walsall about 7 years ago. I was surprised, as I was then, at how unassuming a character he is in real-life. Small, balding, with a neatly trimmed beard, and customary black hat, he talks in a slightly high-pitched voice and seemed a little nervous when he first walked on-stage. However, his ready wit immediately came to the fore as he began answering LeFanu’s questions. Their chat meandered through a variety of subjects, beginning with how he first came to the world of Fantasy/SF (via a Saturday job in a library) and moving through subjects such as his fillings, tarletane dresses, his new book ‘Nation’, and ended by touching on his recent diagnosis of Alzheimer’s.It was fantastic to hear him speak about so many subjects, both related directly to Discworld and also about his own life, which he is generally pretty reticent about. He talked about his house and how he had his own library built, with shelves high enough to require a ladder, and a magnificent open fireplace with stone lintel, which he regularly bangs his head on and led to him wearing an Edwardian velvet smoking cap when sitting in their of an evening. It’s details such as these which remind me why I identify with Terry so much, he is a lover of reading books as well as writing them. I also dream of being able to afford to have my own library, ideally two-stories with a spiral staircase leading up to a balcony running round the top shelves… Though I don’t know what the Librarian would have to say about having an open fire near all of those books (actually, I do, he’d say Oook!).

Terry also read us an extract from his new book ‘Nation’, due to be released in September. This will be another stand-alone book, without the usual suspects (though I assume Death will make an appearance). It is set on a small Pelargic island, known as ‘Mothering Sunday Island’, which near the start of the book is hit by a massive tsunami, killing all but one of the inhabitants. The boy who is left is shortly joined by another survivor, a girl who has been shipwrecked on the island by the wave. So far that’s all we know, though Terry then proceeded to read the extract, taken from the beginning of the book it described the wrecking of the ship from the captain’s perspective. A religious man, he has lashed himself to the wheel, and proceeds to sing ‘For those in peril on the sea’, adding his own alternative final verse as the ship is swept inland on the crest of the wave. The reading also involved Terry singing the verses as the captain heads toward his doom, which was highly entertaining. It was a tantalising glimpse into the new novel and has certainly whetted my appetite, it sounds like it will include Terry’s usual insightful wit and unusual characters. At the end of the talk Terry signed the paper which held the extract and proceeded to auction it off there and then, with the proceeds dedicated to the Alzheimer’s Foundation. It was finally won by a lady sitting a few rows behind me, with a winning sum of £425!

After the conversation part of the evening then Terry answered questions from the audience, sadly no-one asked any terribly insightful ones but he answered with good humour and told a couple of anecdotes. We learnt of the inspiration for the Luggage, as most people know the inception of this character occurred when Terry saw a rather large American woman struggling with a massive suitcase on wheels, apparently with a life of its own. However he went on to say that the Luggage then started life as a character in his next door neighbour’s sons’ RPG games. It was a walking inventory, which was liable to wander off and turn up later, but without your carefully secured weapons and items of value. He also talked a little about Sam Vimes, possibly his most well-loved character, and drew an interesting parallel between Sam’s discomfort with his elevation to the landed gentry, and how this reflects Terry’s own journey from his working class origins to his current status as one of the wealthiest authors in the world.

After his talk Terry came down to the front of the auditorium to sit and sign books. Unfortunately a result of his illness is that he is no longer able to sign dedications, and indeed he did seem to be tiring as we in the queue were encouraged to be as quick as we could when having our books signed. Fortunately I had done the restrained thing anyway, taking only one book to be signed: ‘Guards Guards’, which was the first Discworld novel I ever read. However, the queue stretched from the front all the way around the stalls and out of the door at the back, so I suspect he was there for quite a while.

It was a highly enjoyable evening all in all, it was the first time I had heard Terry speak at length and he was as brilliant and funny as you would expect him to be. I also very much enjoyed being amongst such a large gathering of Discworld fans. I don’t usually attend fan events, more by accident than design, but in future I may try to get to some. The atmosphere was great, everyone was chatting about things that I usually only hear of through the e-fanzines and websites, and I immediately felt that I was amongst kindred spirits (even if some of them did smell a bit strange).

For any fans who may be reading this Terry also mentioned that ‘Night Watch’ is to be broadcast on Radio 4, beginning on Wednesday 27th February at 11pm. He also confirmed that he has a small cameo in the forthcoming adaptation of The Colour of Magic/Light Fantastic, though he was unable to give us any further detail of the date of its premiere on Sky.

Night Watch radio dramatization begins Wednesday

22 February 2008 (16:44) 4 Comments

A dramatization of Night Watch is being broadcast this Wednesday, February 27 on BBC4 radio at 11 p.m. The half-hour radio broadcast, dramatized by Robin Brooks, will feature a full cast, including:

* Sam Vimes ….. Philip Jackson
* Young Sam ….. Carl Prekopp
* Carcer ….. Paul Ritter
* Fred Colon ….. Sam Dale
* Jocasta Wiggs ….. Clare Corbett
* Sergeant Knock ….. Matt Addis
* Dr Lawn ….. Ben Onwukwe
* Willikins ….. Peter Marinker

Check the BBC4 webpage for more information.

 Edit: The broadcast actually consists of five different half-hour episodes, the first of which will be broadcast Wednesday.  Future episodes will be broadcast March 5, March 12, March 19 and March 26.

Book news: Translations in Czech, Romanian

16 February 2008 (16:31) Comment!

In book news, Terry Pratchett’s agent has given us this information:

Talpress in the Czech Republic will be issuing a 2-in-1 omnibus of The Colour of Magic and The Light Fantastic to mark the 25th anniversary of the start of the Discworld. They’re also issuing a collection of the contents of the Discworld Diaries 1998-2007 in a single volume.

Rao in Romania are taking licenses for Pyramids, Moving Pictures, and an unillustrated edition of Eric.

Laguna (Serbia and Montenegro) have acquired licenses for Hogfather and Jingo.

Proszynski (Poland) have just signed a license for Monstrous Regiment.

Barnes & Noble interviews Terry Pratchett

26 January 2008 (15:01) Comment!

On Barnes & Noble’s Meet the Writers Podcast, an episode devoted to Terry Pratchett released last month is available on the podcast feed. Terry Pratchett gets asked all the usual: working at a nuclear power plant, working as a journalist, and his writing process and inspirations.

The Origin of the Species, by “old Charlie”: “Charles Darwin could write a book. It really was a great popular science book. I suppose you could say it was the first popular science book, and it was deservedly popular.”

Being a press officer: “You get home and you’ve been taking all the weird stuff the world can throw at you and just sitting and banging away at a keyboard was how I got through it.”

Becoming a full-time writer: “I can remember the day when I realized that I’d never need do an honest day’s work as long as I lived, if I was careful. It was a bit of a Disney moment. You know, the little tweety birds went round and round my head.”

Satire in the books: “Someone said you can pretty much tell what kind of things were in the news six months ago by reading a Discworld book, because there are kind of shadows of real world events. I don’t think this is entirely true. I mean, people said of the book Thud! that ‘Ah, yes, that’s based on the current situation in the Middle East, isn’t it?’ and I said ‘No,’ because … the current situation in the Middle East has been the current situation in the Middle East for years and years.”

For more on Neil Gaiman and Good Omens, journalism, “draft zero”, and gardening, take a listen to the fifteen minute podcast.

Discworld translations

14 December 2007 (23:54) Comment!

Terry Pratchett’s agent Colin Smythe has sent us the following information about soon-to-be published translations of the Discworld novels and related publications.

“Goldmann will be publishing Lu-Tze’s Yearbook of Enlightenment as their 2009 diary, as will Talpress, who will also be publishing the illustrated version of Eric.

“Karisto (Finland) will be publishing The Last Continent.

“Dela Vision (Hungary) are acquiring a licence for Soul Music, and Conrad (Brazil) for Small Gods.

“In January 2008 Ediciones Altaya in Spain are market testing news-stand editions of The Colour of Magic, Mort, Sourcery, Wyrd Sisters and Pyramids.

“Proszynski (Poland) have published the graphic novel of The Colour of Magic, which will be followed by The Light Fantastic. They have also acquired a licence for Night Watch.”