Where pop culture meets geek culture and they make out a little.
Posts tagged Terry Pratchett
I deal best with stress by ignoring it.
Jul 28th
I could write about how just two weeks ago my wife, out of the blue, got offered her dream job in Seattle (we currently live in So. Cal., for those keeping score) and now we are moving next week. I could go on about how we don’t actually have a place to live in Seattle…with much detail on the two days the wife and I spent their only to see our first choice fall through, and even more detail on how she was in the Pacific Northwest yesterday (flying home today) again, trying to locate a place for us to live. I could go on about how, as yet, I am unsure about my prospects; re: making money. Thursday is my last at the current bookmines so… And then last night, Bella says that she doesn’t want to leave our house where, in her words, “everything is perfect.”
But rather than dwell on all that…I mean, that shit is stressful…I’d rather dwell on one of the books I’m reading right now, Unseen Academicals. I’ve decided that as the number of novels Pratchett will write is now definitely finite (for many years I harbored the, some would say “unrealistic,” hope that Pratchett would live/write forever) that I must parse them out over the years. So that, at least for some amount of time, I still have Pratchett novels yet to read (I haven’t read any of the Tiffany Aching ones, for instance). So the other day I finally picked up Unseen Academicals and damnit, if Pratchett didn’t write the most perfect novel for me. It’s a discworld novel about football! I didn’t think it was possible that Pratchett could have ever topped Night Watch. But, as in many things, I have been proved wrong.
For whatever reason, I’ve been reading a lot lately. Maybe I’m trying to “catch up” from having read almost nothing (well, nothing that wasn’t school related) during the past two semesters. In any event, I also just finished reading God’s Problem by Bart Erhman, which is essentially a discussion about various ways in which the Bible deals with the problem of suffering. The long and short of the Erhman book is…
spoiler alert here, if you’re interested in reading it…
that after many years of wrestling with this issue, Ehrman eventually gave up on his Christianity. What is so fascinating to me, however, is that there is a moment where Unseen Academicals intersects with the ideas in God’s Problem.
Specifically, at one point in the book Lord Vetinari (tyrant of Ankh-Morpork) says (and apologies to Sir Pratchett as I don’t hav ethe book right in front of me so this is a paraphrase) “Some say evil exists in the world so that good can be illuminated. There is more to the argument, though I’ve never heard it because I am too busy laughing out loud.”
The final consideration of why evil exists, in Ehrman’s work, is that same idea…that we wouldn’t know what “good” is if “evil” did not exist as its counterpart. Ehrman than uses some extended passages from The Brothers Karamazov to support his argument that, as an intellectual and moral consideration, such a defense of evil/suffering is repugnant.
So for the few of you that saw my facebook update re: Pratchett’s genius, this is what I was talking about. It is things like this that motivate me to get down with the business of actually finishing my first book (not just letting the rough draft sit around) and make some real attempts to get it published.
Perhaps Seattle is just the place for something like that….
I am a swimming in, how do you say, books.
Sep 30th
I’m reading three books right now; Geek Love, The Street of Crocodiles, and The Posthumous Memories of Bras Cubas. I just finished The Names three days ago. I’m also trying to write three (reasonably short) papers and grade 37.
As I type this, there are more than 25 books in my car. If I take a corner too fast I am randomly hit in the head by something like this, or this, or this.
Of course, all of this is of secondary import today.
If You Feel Like Laughing and Crying on This Wednesday.
Mar 19th
You might just want to read this Guardian article/interview with Terry Pratchett. I thought about excerpting parts of it, but as with most anything that Pratchett’s name is attached to, it is more a disservice to excerpt then anything else. Just read the whole thing.
I will, however, just relate my one anecdote about when I met Mr. Pratchett. Well, I’ll relate a piece of it, at any rate. If you want a full version, my previous interwebz alter-ego did a bang up job of telling the story some time ago…
One point that wasn’t mentioned before, though, was that there was a water leak (from the store’s air conditioning system) above and to the side of where Pratchett was sitting during all three hours of his appearance. Every 10 seconds or so a few drips would trickle down just a few feet from Pratchett’s head. As the wife and I approached Pratchett, though, something like 20 oz. of water cascaded down. Inside one of the two books that he signed Pratchett wrote “James, Duck!” and then signed his name.
That, my friends, is awesomeness at its most awesomest!
Indeed…it appears that oddness abounds this fine, nearly spring morn…
Mar 17th
Is an entire e-mail I just sent to exsulis which, I thought, sounded rather nice and I would share with all you Normalinauts out there…
Take, for instance, this incoming referrer link…
http://doctorwho.xooit.fr/t412-Dossier-Doctor-Who-et-les-USA.htm
from a French Doctor Who forum. I say thank you random French person, whoever you are, and I know that such a thing makes exsulis all warm and fuzzy inside!
In unrelated news, Terry Pratchett, as we all know, has been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s. But it recently came to light that he has donated a “princely sum” to Alzheimer’s research, and asked that his fans do the same…
You can, of course, donate directly, or if you’re like me, or you like T-shirts, you can do this…
Clearly, god is dead and Satan has decided to skull F**K our eyes out for the sheer GOD-DAMN enjoyment of it!
Dec 12th
I’m not going to link to it, because that means I’d have to say something meaningful. Even in my wildest dreams, I’m not nearly as eloquent as Terry Pratchett…
11th December 2007
AN EMBUGGERANCE
| Folks,I would have liked to keep this one quiet for a little while, but because of upcoming conventions and of course the need to keep my publishers informed, it seems to me unfair to withhold the news. I have been diagnosed with a very rare form of early onset Alzheimer’s, which lay behind this year’s phantom “stroke”.We are taking it fairly philosophically down here and possibly with a mild optimism. For now work is continuing on the completion of Nation and the basic notes are already being laid down for Unseen Academicals. All other things being equal, I expect to meet most current and, as far as possible, future commitments but will discuss things with the various organisers. Frankly, I would prefer it if people kept things cheerful, because I think there’s time for at least a few more books yet  )
PS I would just like to draw attention to everyone reading the above that this should be interpreted as ‘I am not dead’. I will, of course, be dead at some future point, as will everybody else. For me, this maybe further off than you think – it’s too soon to tell. I know it’s a very human thing to say “Is there anything I can do”, but in this case I would only entertain offers from very high-end experts in brain chemistry. |
-o-
This response is similar, I think, to Robert Jordan’s in that it is both heartfelt and upbeat. I know, were I forced to consider the possibility of going through what Terry Pratchett likely will (or RJ had to) I might very well consider ending it. But I’m a coward.
In an attempt to make some sort of headway toward “normality” I am now posting this…post…so as to increase overall aggregrate volume of content on the website you are currently looking at.
Oct 1st
Couldn’t really think of a title here, so I figured I would ramble a bit until I felt like there was certainly the hint of something being said without, in fact, anything actually being said.
I feel I have achieved this goal.
Now then, the following image was co-opted from Poor Mojo’s Newswire (which itself, co-opted said image from Boing Boing, which itself co-opted said image from L-space…and the internets continue to spiral on…)
Having just finished reading (and, ahem, listening to the audio book) Making Money I look upon this diagram and think that it does a disservice to the discworld series.
You can certainly pick up any of the books, at any time, and start reading. Pratchett does such a good job of summarizing past events when it is necessary that you don’t need to have read everything that has come before. Case in point, in Making Money he references some events from Feet of Clay. Now Feet of Clay is a standard, Pratchett length novel, but in Making Money he talks about some of the events in Feet of Clay for a paragraph, but that’s all the reader really needs to understand the context in which the events in the current novel are happening.
But to break the novels up into several “mini-series” within the larger framework of the universe takes away from how Pratchett developed the world. He did not sit down and write five novels based on Ryncewind and then said “Now I’m going to write some books on the City Watch.” The entire universe evolved organically from Pratchett’s mind. The narratives came up out of the ether and Pratchett put them down as they came. There was no prescribed path through the world as he was creating it.
Maybe I take slight offense at trying to break the series down like this because I read it in order of publication and I believe that everything I do is best. I can certainly understand the desire to break the novels down into more easily “digestable” chunks, rather than thinking about 30+ novels as a series (and this list doesn’t take into account all of the anciallary works like the Mapp’s, the Yearbooks, Nanny Ogg’s Cookbook, the RPG, etc.).
On some level, this is just me being nit-picky. Whenever anyone comes into the book store and asks for a recommendation in Sci-Fi and Fantasy I always bring up Pratchett. The more people that read him, the better the world will be, I believe, so if such a breakdown helps someone approach the series I should certainly support that.
OK…well…maybe I had no real point then.
I’m late, sue me…
Aug 20th
Ok, so I was going to have this done last week and hand it over to Kilian so he could upload it (which, technically I did, oh, say, late last night- which is still part of that week… I tried). At any rate, the short end of the story is that I got incredibly bogged down with a bunch of stuff from the video-game day job that all suddenly had to be done right then and there – no sleep for you or going to this mythical place that you call “home” or spending time with your lovely girlfriend and these other figments of imagination you say are “friends,” no! No, token white (although, really I’m not white) man of the Trickster office, you must stay, strapped to your desk, your waccom pen crazy-glued to your hand, an IV drip full of a sick combination of Monster, Rockstar and Subway sandwiches and pound out page after page and design after design of new characters, stuff and animation breakdowns! Go man, go! We doth owneth thy soul-eternal!… I balked until they offered me smokes, for free(!), which combined with free range-matches of Mario Kart DS pushed me over the edge.
Yes, that really was the short version – in fact it is still on-going, I will not have one of these mythical things known as “wee-kands” for another 2 weeks. But in the meantime, and actually as of arse-crack-thirty on Friday morning, I get to go to PAX ^__^ ! Yay! Sorry Kilian, sorry April >_<… I will bring you guys back stuff. Later this week, before I leave I will be making a major personal announcement, but I wanted to finish a piece of artwork for it, which I haven’t had the chance to get to yet. So, basically I was busy, and or swamped, and I did have the comic finished oh say Monday or Tues, and only had a few more hours of work left on touching it up and finishing it, which were unfortunately left until yesterday. Somehow, the week simply got away from me… *sigh* But here it is, straight from Kilian’s brain, through my hand, down to my waccom, and through the digital ether to your organic-visual-receptors yaha!
(click image to make it large enough to actually read…)
So, there it is, I will now lead the rest to Kilian, who has a great deal to say about this I am told ^__^. Apparently, my IV drip needs changing, please excuse me.
–Aleister
You know what, some days I’m really glad I don’t work for a video game company anymore…I remember the 80 hour weeks. The 4 hours of sleep a night. The fact that you spent nearly every waking moment working and still didn’t make enough to pay bills…
Anyway, let me talk about said comic strip.
The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy was, possibly, the film I have anticipated the most in my lifetime. Certainly Episode I and Stardust rank quite high, but I had wanted to see a film version of HHGTTG for something like 15 years before it came out. Now I did not become familiar with Terry Pratchett until some six years ago, when a friend lent me a copy of The Color of Magic to read on a late night bus trip from Anaheim to San Francisco. Sadly, I finished the book about halfway through the bus ride, but that is a testament to the greatness of the writing (and shortness, in all honesty, since it’s barely novel length).
Since that fateful early morning I have been under what you might a fanatical spell for all things Pratchett related (in a sidenote, I did read Good Omens in high school, and that was the book that made me want to be a writer, but for whatever reason I didn’t pick up any other Pratchett until 7 years later). In fact, I would class my life into two general time periods, the pre-Pratchett dark ages and the Pratchett Enlightenment. Now I have not been waiting as long for a Pratchett film as I did for HHGTTG, but my wait has burned with even more fervor.
And yes, Sky 1 did already produce a mini-series adaptation of Hogfather, but Color of Magic is where the series begins and also where my undying love and devotion for Pratchett also began. Plus, this one actually has some actors I can recognize.
I’m, perhaps, a bit of a pessimist by nature, but my life has tended to play out my fears more often than not. In fact, I believe it is a totally reasonable assumption to think that this whole Color of Magic mini-series is only a complex plot hatched to give me artificial hope before crushing me with the reality that the production will never be complete. Either that, or I get hit by lighting the day it airs. I’d say odds are 50-50 either way.