The Terry Pratchett Thread: For the sake of prisoners and the flight of birds

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NorgLyle: Sep 20, 2002; Do you think I posted to this forum because I value your companionship?

I just finished re-reading Monstrous Regiment, largely because it was the book people were talking about in this thread most heavily when I caught up. I feel like it's a really great read but that, sadly, the ending just sort of hangs there.

Everyone being acknowledged as soldiers is nice and I'm always happy with the last scenes back at The Dutchess but, I guess because mainly when I want to read Discworld I'll pick up a Watch book or a Death, everything in MR felt comparatively low-stakes. It's a good story with some quality characters and a decent message (that... also gets slightly muddled at the end) but I can't see myself coming back to it over and over the way I have some of my favorites. Did anyone else have a similar reaction?

# ? Aug 11, 2015 01:25

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# ? May 19, 2024 10:06

MikeJF: Dec 20, 2003

Ccs posted:

But I just can't adjust to the premise that instead of corporations mining these worlds for resources and making humans very comfortable

That doesn't happen anyway? They have limitless Earths, after all...

# ? Aug 11, 2015 02:05

Skippy McPants: Mar 19, 2009

VagueRant posted:

There's so many Night Watch quotes beyond that. God, Vimes is so loving good.

Truth.

Terry Pratchett posted:

He met young Sam coming the other way as he headed for the cells. The boy�s face was white in the gloom.
�Found any?� said Vimes.
�Oh, Sarge��
�Yes?�
�Oh, Sarge�Sarge�� Tears were running down the lance constable�s face.
Vimes reached out and steadied himself. Sam felt as though there were no bones left in his body. He was trembling.
�There�s a woman in the last cell, and she�. Sarge�oh, Sarge��
�Try taking deep breaths,� said Vimes. �Not that this air is fit to breathe."

...

Vimes glanced at the door of the last room. No, he wasn�t going in there again. No wonder it stank here.

Might be my favorite thing Pratchett ever wrote. We never find out what happened in that last room, only that more than thirty years later Vimes remembers exactly what's in there and has no interest in seeing it again. Terry was always very sparing with tackling really dark stuff, but whenever he did, drat...

# ? Aug 11, 2015 07:06

Skippy McPants: Mar 19, 2009

And on a slightly light note, the Every drat Day monologue, which is also so, so good.

quote:

Vimes climbed back up the barricade. The city beyond was dark again, with only the occasional chink of light from a shuttered window. By comparison, the streets of the Republic were ablaze.

In a few hours, the shops out there were expecting deliveries, and they weren�t going to arrive. The government couldn�t sit this one out. A city like Ankh-Morpork was only two meals away from chaos at the best of times.

Every day maybe a hundred cows died for Ankh-Morpork. So did a flock of sheep and a herd of pigs, and the gods alone knew how many ducks, chickens, and geese. Flour? He�d heard it was eighty tons, and about the same amount of potatoes, and maybe twenty tons of herring. He didn�t particularly want to know this kind of thing, but once you started having to sort out the everlasting traffic problem, these were the kind of facts that got handed to you.

Every day, forty thousand eggs were laid for the city. Every day, hundreds, thousands of carts and boats and barges converged on the city with fish and honey and oysters and olives and eels and lobsters. And then think of the horses dragging this stuff, and the windmills�and the wool coming in, too, every day, the cloth, the tobacco, the spices, the ore, the timber, the cheese, the coal, the fat, the tallow, the hay EVERY drat DAY�

And that was now. Back home, the city was twice as big�

Against the dark screen of night, Vimes had a vision of Ankh-Morpork. It wasn�t a city, it was a process, a weight on the world that distorted the land for hundreds of miles around. People who�d never see it in their whole life nevertheless spent that life working for it. Thousands and thousands of green acres were part of it, forests were part of it. It drew in and consumed�

�and gave back the dung from its pens, and the soot from its chimneys, and steel, and saucepans, and all the tools by which its food was made. And also clothes, and fashions, and ideas, and interesting vices, songs, and knowledge, and something which, if looked at in the right light, was called civilization. That was what civilization meant. It meant the city.

Was anyone else out there thinking about this?

A lot of the stuff came in through the Onion Gate and the Shambling Gate, both now Republican and solidly locked. There�d be a military picket on them, surely. Right now, there were carts on the way that�d find those gates closed to them. Yet, no matter what the politics, eggs hatch, and milk sours, and herds of driven animals need penning and watering, and where was that going to happen? Would the military sort it out? Well, would they? While the carts rumbled up, and then were hemmed in by the carts behind, and the pigs escaped, and the cattle herds wandered off?

Was anyone important thinking about this? Suddenly the machine was wobbling, but Winder and his cronies didn�t think about the machine, they thought about money. Meat and drink came from servants. They happened.

Vetinari, Vimes realized, thought about this sort of thing all the time. The Ankh-Morpork back home was twice as big and four times as vulnerable. He wouldn�t have let something like this happen. Little wheels must spin so that the machine can turn, he�d say.

But now, in the dark, it all spun on Vimes. If the man breaks down, it all breaks down, he thought. The whole machine breaks down. And it goes on breaking down. And it breaks down the people.

# ? Aug 11, 2015 07:15

Hedrigall: Mar 27, 2008; by vyelkin

Terry Pratchett was so loving smart. :h:

# ? Aug 11, 2015 11:52

FactsAreUseless: Feb 16, 2011

That's my favorite part of Night Watch except for the very last sentence, which is pretty clumsy.

But while Pratchett's a great writer, it's not because of his prose on a sentence-by-sentence basis.

# ? Aug 11, 2015 11:53

My Lovely Horse: Aug 21, 2010

Skippy McPants posted:

Terry was always very sparing with tackling really dark stuff, but whenever he did, drat...

The best thing is how this is probably the darkest scene he's ever written and it still has the "steadied himself" line in it.

# ? Aug 11, 2015 12:08

Skippy McPants: Mar 19, 2009

My Lovely Horse posted:

The best thing is how this is probably the darkest scene he's ever written and it still has the "steadied himself" line in it.

The really impressive bit, is that the unabridged passage contains an interruption from Death and is maybe the most tonally dissonant thing Pratchett ever wrote, but that last line still has enough punch that it somehow doesn't kill the scene.

FactsAreUseless posted:

But while Pratchett's a great writer, it's not because of his prose on a sentence-by-sentence basis.

I can't think of a single prolific writer who has really, truly, crisp sentence-by-sentence construction. That sort of commitment to prose is something a lot of working writers just don't have time for, because it can only be achieved through obsessive rewriting. That's not a bad thing mind you, I have a ton of respect for people with the gall to beat their head against that wall until every bit of text flows like poetry, but take's a different kind of madman than Pratchett himself was. He was more the--Oh my god there are so many, get them out of my head makeitstoptoomuch!--kind of writer.

# ? Aug 11, 2015 20:18

withak: Jan 15, 2003; Fun Shoe

Great, now I have an urge to re-read Watch books but no time to do so. :-/

# ? Aug 12, 2015 01:02

Trin Tragula: Apr 22, 2005

Vimes and Detritus is a combination that just plain didn't happen often enough. And he never had the time to get around to Scouting for Trolls...

Feet of Clay, take it away.

quote:

'Incidentally, Sergeant, I've got a report here that a troll in uniform nailed one of
Chrysoprase's henchmen to a wall by his ears last night. Know anything about that?'
The troll wrinkled its enormous forehead. 'Does it say anything 'bout him selling bags of Slab
to troll kids?'
'No. It says he was going to read spiritual literature to his dear old mother,' said Vimes.
'Did Hardcore say he saw dis troll's badge?'
'No, but he says the troll threatened to ram it where the sun doesn't shine,' said Vimes.
Detritus nodded gravely. 'Dat's a long way to go just to ruin a good badge,' he said.
'By the way,' said Vimes, 'that was a lucky guess of yours, guessing that it was Hardcore.'
'It come to me in a flash, sir,' said Detritus. 'I fort: what bastard who sells Slab to kids
deserves bein' nailed up by his ears, sir, and . . . bingo. Dis idea just formed in my head.'
'That's what I thought.'
Cheery Littlebottom looked from one impassive face to the other. The Watchmen's eyes
never left each other's face, but the words seemed to come from a little distance, as though
both of them were reading an invisible script.
Then Detritus shook his head slowly. 'Musta been a impostor, sir. 'S easy to get helmets like
ours. None of my trolls'd do anything like dat. Dat would be police brutality, sir.'
'Glad to hear it. Just for the look of the thing, though, I want you to check the trolls' lockers.
The Silicon Anti-Defamation League are on to this one.'
'Yes, sir. An' if I find out it was one of my trolls I will be down on dat troll like a ton of
rectang'lar buildin' things, sir.'

And, of course, the coda...

quote:

'Dis is der ole privy wot we don't use no more, you can use it for mixin' up stuff, it the only
place we got now, you have to clean it up first 'cos it smells like a toilet in here.'
He opened another door. 'And this der locker room,' he said. 'You got your own peg and dat,
and dere's dese panels for getting changed behind 'cos we knows you dwarfs is modest. It a
good life if you don't weaken. Mr Vimes is okay but he a bit weird about some stuff, he
keepin' on sayin' stuff like dis city is a meltin' pot an' all der scum floats to der top, and stuff
like dat. I'll give you your helmet an' badge in a minute but first' � he opened a rather larger
locker on the other side of the room, which had 'DTRiTUS' painted on it - 'I got to go and
hide dis hammer.'

Nobody remembers it because it falls down the cracks of Jolly Littlebottom and Beaky Littlebottom, but it's absolutely fantastic.

# ? Aug 12, 2015 01:40

Flipswitch: Mar 30, 2010

I think Thud had a brilliant Vimes/Detritus moment where they slightly clash on how people react and deal with Trolls, Thuds a great book too.

The hide dis hammer line in Feet of Clay is brilliant. The books needed more Dorfl.

# ? Aug 12, 2015 03:23

VagueRant: May 24, 2012

I approve of all this quote posting.

Which is why it makes me so sad that Equal Rites hasn't really thrown up any quotes so far. I'm a little past halfway through and I just haven't gotten into it at all, it hasn't held my attention, I don't care much for Esk or Granny or their weird little adventure, and haven't noticed anything particularly interesting or funny. :smith:

Maybe it was a bad idea to go from Prime Pratchett (Monstrous Regiment) and a subject I'm interested in (soldierin'), to very very early Pratchett and a subject I find annoying (magic!). But on the other hand, I thought Mort was super good and that's the very next one, so, I don't even know.

# ? Aug 15, 2015 18:29

rejutka: May 28, 2004; by zen death robot

Mort was when Terry got the hang of plots. Interestingly, Esk is so named because he wanted a short name for the character that would be quick to type out repeatedly and, as he was pondering what to call her, his gaze fell on his Esc key.

# ? Aug 15, 2015 18:35

Alhazred: Feb 16, 2011

VagueRant posted:

I approve of all this quote posting.

Which is why it makes me so sad that Equal Rites hasn't really thrown up any quotes so far. I'm a little past halfway through and I just haven't gotten into it at all, it hasn't held my attention, I don't care much for Esk or Granny or their weird little adventure, and haven't noticed anything particularly interesting or funny.

Have you gotten to the Zoons? I liked that concept.

# ? Aug 15, 2015 18:42

tooterfish: Jul 13, 2013

Ccs posted:

Has anyone read "The Long Earth" series by Terry Pratchett and Stephen Baxter? The premise is basically humans suddenly discover they can step into alternate parallel worlds without any humans in them, so they start colonizing these places and exploring and building new societies. But I just can't adjust to the premise that instead of corporations mining these worlds for resources and making humans very comfortable, a huge amount of the population decides to settle these new worlds like old-school pioneers; farming and making stuff like candles and tools from scratch.

C'mon, there's no way people are going to give up modern comforts to live like that. Why would they?

It would kill real estate prices though. I could build a nice house on Earth-2 in the middle of New York City and commute every day to Earth-1 NYC in one step.

Iron won't make the jump, a little nod to mythology. It means that ironworking has to be bootstrapped on each new world, and that mining (iron specifically) for export is a bit of a waste of time. So the people outpace the corporations, for a while at least. And I can definitely see some people jumping at the chance of living the pioneer life, people are weird like that.

If you found Long Earth interesting, you should check out Rumfuddle by Jack Vance. It does parallel worlds really well. Also, Chronicles of Amber does it well too, but that's more a fantasy thing.

I won't recommend Dark Tower, because despite what my username might suggest, I was bored shitless by book 3. Lots of other people think it's great though, so I might have to give it another chance...

tooterfish fucked around with this message at 19:30 on Aug 15, 2015

# ? Aug 15, 2015 19:28

Rand Brittain: Mar 25, 2013; "Go on until you're stopped."

I started Raising Steam in the hope that people were exaggerating the problems with it.

...they weren't. That makes me sad.

# ? Aug 15, 2015 19:57

fluppet: Feb 10, 2009

There a release date for the last Tiffany book yet?

# ? Aug 16, 2015 07:56

Khizan: Jul 30, 2013

Ccs posted:

Has anyone read "The Long Earth" series by Terry Pratchett and Stephen Baxter? The premise is basically humans suddenly discover they can step into alternate parallel worlds without any humans in them, so they start colonizing these places and exploring and building new societies. But I just can't adjust to the premise that instead of corporations mining these worlds for resources and making humans very comfortable, a huge amount of the population decides to settle these new worlds like old-school pioneers; farming and making stuff like candles and tools from scratch.

C'mon, there's no way people are going to give up modern comforts to live like that. Why would they?

For a lot of people, life in the modern world goes something like this: Wake up, go to work, do meaningless poo poo for 8+ hours, go home, have a few hours for yourself and family, go to bed. Repeat every weekday of every week of every year until you're 65+. It wouldn't surprise me at all if a significant percentage of the population looked down the barrel of a 30-40 year stretch of shuffling papers and decided that they'd rather go play pioneer.

# ? Aug 16, 2015 08:35

Jedit: Dec 10, 2011; Proudly supporting vanilla legends 1994-2014

fluppet posted:

There a release date for the last Tiffany book yet?

The 27th.

# ? Aug 16, 2015 10:23

FactsAreUseless: Feb 16, 2011

VagueRant posted:

I approve of all this quote posting.

Which is why it makes me so sad that Equal Rites hasn't really thrown up any quotes so far. I'm a little past halfway through and I just haven't gotten into it at all, it hasn't held my attention, I don't care much for Esk or Granny or their weird little adventure, and haven't noticed anything particularly interesting or funny.

Drop it, read Wyrd Sisters instead if you want to read an early Pratchett about the witches.

# ? Aug 16, 2015 13:52

Trin Tragula: Apr 22, 2005

I like Equal Rites a lot, but it's a sad moment when you realise that, standing on its own, it really never needed to be any more than this speech that he gave at 80s conventions, somewhere between The Colour of Magic and The Light Fantastic.

quote:

The archetypal wizard is of course Merlin, advisor of kings, maker of the Round Table, and the only man who knew how to work the electromagnet that released the Sword from the Stone. He is not in fact a folklore hero, because much of what we know about him is based firmly on Geoffrey de Monmouth's Life of Merlin, written in the Twelfth Century. Old Geoffrey was one of the world's great writers of fantasy, nearly as good as Fritz Leiber but without that thing about cats.

He then goes on, rather amusingly, to point out the growing ursupation of Merlin's place in culture by Gandalf, something which I would say is now complete thanks to Ian McKellen waving his enormous staff (it's got a knob on the end) around everywhere.

# ? Aug 16, 2015 18:29

a cow: May 6, 2007; friendship is magic
in a pony paradise
don't you judge me

He can't bugger a hedgehog though.

# ? Aug 16, 2015 19:53

kender: Dec 15, 2000; Forum Veteran

I've been tearing through the Discworld books during unemployment and the local library's generous having of most of them.

I went through published order because why not.

Just finished I Shall Wear Midnight and am on to Snuff. Feeling kind of broken hearted that this is it for my fix of Vimes, Carrot and company (well, maybe they appear in Raising Steam, but not as focus). Maybe I'll get some Weatherwax/Ogg/Magrat in the last Aching book, but I feel like I'm missing a lot without them around anymore. And I never read this series much until two years ago when I slowly started going through them. But with this long, extended tear of them, I feel really sad that I'm almost done with them.

I love the god damned writing in these. While The Watch is my favorite group, the Witches had some of the best quotes or points about anything.

"She had been deep in conversation with the fool, although it was the kind of conversation where both parties spend a lot of their time looking at their feet and picking at their fingernails. Ninety per cent of true love is acute, ear-burning embarrasment"

It just hit the sap in me perfectly.

And the moment in Carpe Jugulum (I don't have it handy, so I can't quote it) where Granny asks what horrible thing the husband did, and hears nothing as the answer and replies that's why she couldn't make HIM choose.

# ? Aug 20, 2015 23:36

rejutka: May 28, 2004; by zen death robot

Interested to see how accurate I am:

What's he ever done to me, that I should make him choose?

# ? Aug 20, 2015 23:44

Jedit: Dec 10, 2011; Proudly supporting vanilla legends 1994-2014

rejutka posted:

Interested to see how accurate I am:

What's he ever done to me, that I should make him choose?

Close.

quote:

'You still reckon I should've asked Mr Ivy?' she said.

'That's what I would have done...'the woman mumbled.

'You don't like him? You think he's a bad man?' said Granny, adjusting her hatpins.

'No!'

'Then what's he ever done to me, that I should hurt him so?'

# ? Aug 21, 2015 00:25

Snowmankilla: Dec 6, 2000; True, true

Jedit posted:

Close.

This is one of my favorite single quotes ever. Probably tied with
"Them as can do has to do for them as can't. And someone has to speak up for them as has no voices."

# ? Aug 21, 2015 03:13

withak: Jan 15, 2003; Fun Shoe

I was re-reading Watch books, and the transition from Night Watch to Thud to Snuff is depressing. :-/

# ? Aug 22, 2015 15:30

VagueRant: May 24, 2012

Bit of a tasteless question, but what's worse - Earliest Pratchett or Latest Pratchett?

# ? Aug 22, 2015 17:05

My Lovely Horse: Aug 21, 2010

I haven't read too much latest Pratchett but it's gotta be that. Early Pratchett is just unpolished, late is a constant reminder how much better things should have been.

# ? Aug 22, 2015 17:10

Hogge Wild: Aug 21, 2012; by FactsAreUseless; Pillbug

VagueRant posted:

Bit of a tasteless question, but what's worse - Earliest Pratchett or Latest Pratchett?

only pratchett i stopped reading was was the latest

# ? Aug 23, 2015 00:41

FactsAreUseless: Feb 16, 2011

VagueRant posted:

Bit of a tasteless question, but what's worse - Earliest Pratchett or Latest Pratchett?

His stuff at the end was much worse.

# ? Aug 23, 2015 01:41

Rand Brittain: Mar 25, 2013; "Go on until you're stopped."

(Although, I think some of it isn't Alzheimer's so much as an increasingly-large web of relationships and established characters who all have to be reintroduced for new readers each time, frequently requiring a new joke about an old thing.)

# ? Aug 23, 2015 02:12

Konstantin: Jun 20, 2005; And the Lord said, "Look, they are one people, and they have all one language; and this is only the beginning of what they will do; nothing that they propose to do will now be impossible for them.

One issue with late Pratchett is that it reads like a first draft. No good book is written alone, and a lot of what makes Pratchett great is how refined his writing is. For example, someone should have had a discussion with him about why a character who was written as a pacifist is killing a bunch of bandits. The disease may have made that kind of collaboration and review much more difficult, which is a shame.

# ? Aug 23, 2015 02:51

Liquid Communism: Mar 9, 2004; коммунизм хранится в яичках

Konstantin posted:

One issue with late Pratchett is that it reads like a first draft. No good book is written alone, and a lot of what makes Pratchett great is how refined his writing is. For example, someone should have had a discussion with him about why a character who was written as a pacifist is killing a bunch of bandits. The disease may have made that kind of collaboration and review much more difficult, which is a shame.

He lost the ability to read a year or two before he passed. His last books were only rough proofed because that was the best he could do when he had to have them dictated to him, and he wasn't strong enough to spend the months doing iterative revisions that he used to.

# ? Aug 23, 2015 05:01

toasterwarrior: Nov 11, 2011

Liquid Communism posted:

He lost the ability to read a year or two before he passed. His last books were only rough proofed because that was the best he could do when he had to have them dictated to him, and he wasn't strong enough to spend the months doing iterative revisions that he used to.

Jesus Christ.

To have passed away a happy man at peace with himself is the least I could've ever wanted for Pterry :unsmith:

# ? Aug 23, 2015 05:06

Jedit: Dec 10, 2011; Proudly supporting vanilla legends 1994-2014

Liquid Communism posted:

He lost the ability to read a year or two before he passed.

It was Pterry's capacity to read that was lost, not his ability. What happened was that his visual cortex was attacked, causing a variable loss of data output. The way he described it was like a reflection in a broken mirror with missing pieces, except some of the "missing" pieces were just blurred. And because it wasn't the eyes not seeing but rather the brain losing the ability to continuously tell him what they saw, the pieces would move around. This meant he couldn't adjust to a new focal point, because sometimes he'd have perfect central vision and mess around the outside while other times he'd be blind outside his peripheral vision.

(Also it was only about eight months before the end that it got really bad. He'd certainly been planning to attend last year's Discworld Con as late as July; most people found out he wasn't coming at the Opening Ceremony.)

# ? Aug 23, 2015 10:38

FactsAreUseless: Feb 16, 2011

The issues with his later books are a combination of:

- Dictation changing his writing style, especially with the sudden appearance of large monologues. I suspect dialogue was much more fun to dictate.

- Lack of editing. The refusal to slow his release schedule and give the books a second run hurt them. You see this even before he starts dictating: Thud is riddled with errors.

Basically I think he needed more support than he got in terms of saying "this isn't ready to be published."

# ? Aug 23, 2015 14:35

Mokinokaro: Sep 11, 2001; At the end of everything, hold onto anything; Fun Shoe

FactsAreUseless posted:

Basically I think he needed more support than he got in terms of saying "this isn't ready to be published."

Wasn't his daughter one of his primary editors? I could it being really difficult to criticize your father's writing when he was in that state.

# ? Aug 23, 2015 14:54

FactsAreUseless: Feb 16, 2011

Mokinokaro posted:

Wasn't his daughter one of his primary editors? I could it being really difficult to criticize your father's writing when he was in that state.

Yeah, I don't blame anyone involved. It wasn't an easy situation.

# ? Aug 23, 2015 15:24

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# ? May 19, 2024 10:06

Flipswitch: Mar 30, 2010

I'm actually re-reading Raising Steam at the moment and one thing I've noticed in this book is that it's got a breakneck pace, I don't think any other Discworld books pushes through things this quickly, but then I suppose the nature of the railway means it has to take place over a longer course of time.

# ? Aug 23, 2015 18:40

The Something Awful Forums > The Finer Arts > The Book Barn > The Terry Pratchett Thread: For the sake of prisoners and the flight of birds

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