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CommonShore posted:was it known when it was written/published that it was carrying that burden? The short answer is probably "no", but Terry's Alzheimer's was progressing progressing pretty steadily at that point and he in fact had to dictate the novel because he wasn't able to type as well as he used to. I am sure that if he wasn't struggling with his condition he would've written a lot more past Raising Steam and Shepherd's Crown, and of course Shepherd's Crown was published posthumously in what Terry would've considered unfinished condition, but I think he knew how much time he had left to write a proper ending to the Discworld. Having the Disc officially enter the Industrial Age is as good a stopping point as any.
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Jan 4, 2023 06:09
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Youremother posted:The short answer is probably "no", but Terry's Alzheimer's was progressing progressing pretty steadily at that point and he in fact had to dictate the novel because he wasn't able to type as well as he used to. I am sure that if he wasn't struggling with his condition he would've written a lot more past Raising Steam and Shepherd's Crown, and of course Shepherd's Crown was published posthumously in what Terry would've considered unfinished condition, but I think he knew how much time he had left to write a proper ending to the Discworld. Having the Disc officially enter the Industrial Age is as good a stopping point as any. He’d been dictating well before then; I Shall Wear Midnight and Snuff were both largely dictated by Terry into voice recognition software, possibly even Unseen Academicals.
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Jan 4, 2023 06:38
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Bruceski posted:The reference I feel proud of myself for getting is the Selachii and Venturi families who are rivals in Ankh-Morpork high society. Never got this, never got dog-botherer (on my own).
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Jan 4, 2023 07:06
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The_Doctor posted:He’d been dictating well before then; I Shall Wear Midnight and Snuff were both largely dictated by Terry into voice recognition software, possibly even Unseen Academicals. I didn't actually know that. I'd seen others making him dictating Raising Steam as the explanation for the book's noticeable shift in writing style, but if there was a point in my opinion where Discworld started to feel different it would have been Unseen Academicals...
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Jan 4, 2023 17:32
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Unseen Academicals is such an odd one because I’d never heard Terry express a single interest in football ever apart from that one line in his tiny biography about being a journalist and covering everything but the football.
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Jan 4, 2023 17:55
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I think the tonal difference is partly due to scope and partly due to his work on The Long Earth series. I'd always figured "co-written" meant Terry came up with the ideas and Baxter did the writing, but the latest biography establishes pretty clearly that Terry was much more involved than that, and I think the tone and approach are much closer: the later Long "X" books go more and more for "sweep of history" perspectives and the introduction of new characters who may or may not feature for very long, both things that happen in Raising Steam as well. To a certain extent, it feels like a book that continues some of the work of Nation, but which (atypically for Terry) takes a focus on ideas, technological progress, and their effect on people and society much more than focusing on people. If we reverse Granny's "people as things" formulation, Raising Steam is as much about things as people as it is about the characters we want it to be focused on. The extent to which golems play a part in the novel may reinforce that, especially the extent to which Terry seems to suggest that social movements depend much more upon technology and technological advancement than generally gets acknowledged. Again, it's not an argument you'd expect from someone as humanist as he'd been; I'm not sure if Raising Steam qualifies as a "post-humanist" story, but it does feel like the positive-but-cynical take on something that Shepherd's Crown approaches in a much less cynical way. That doesn't change that you can see he simply didn't spend the same amount of time polishing and perfecting from scene to scene, and while I think some of the disjointedness is purposeful, I'm unsure whether the purpose preceded or followed problems with the story and its shape and pacing. At least the possibility that the story got out of Terry's control goes hand in hand with some of the themes.
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Jan 4, 2023 23:08
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The back half of the Rob Wilkins official biography is very hard work to get through, he's not spared a lot in how he writes about Terry going downhill.quote:...On top of that, there would always come the great day of reckoning when Terry went back and cut and shifted things around, and planed and sanded and polished what he had written until it was the novel. But this time, in a way that filled me with panic, there was no sign of that day coming. He was just downloading these scenes, beautiful scenes, one after another. The book simply grew and grew. By the end of March 2013, the count stood at 130,000 words – the length of Unseen Academicals. Rob then called Terry's editor, and they stitched the scenes together into something approaching a novel as best they could.
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Jan 5, 2023 00:37
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Wow, that is incredibly sad. Alzheimer's is hell.
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Jan 5, 2023 00:52
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Trin Tragula posted:The back half of the Rob Wilkins official biography is very hard work to get through, he's not spared a lot in how he writes about Terry going downhill. dang I wonder if that accounts for the summary passages that I was noting above.
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Jan 5, 2023 01:11
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CommonShore posted:dang I wonder if that accounts for the summary passages that I was noting above. I'm sure it does.
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Jan 5, 2023 05:44
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One thing to remember is that Alzheimer’s robbed Terry of his sight too, so he couldn’t actually read what he’d written/dictated, it had to be read back to him. Not being able to see things on the page is a huge detriment to a writer.
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Jan 5, 2023 06:57
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The_Doctor posted:One thing to remember is that Alzheimer’s robbed Terry of his sight too, so he couldn’t actually read what he’d written/dictated, it had to be read back to him. Not being able to see things on the page is a huge detriment to a writer. It took it in a really weird way, as well. Parts of his visual field would be missing, parts would be jumbled, parts would be normal, but which parts were which would change constantly. So he wasn't exactly blind, but he couldn't read because half the words in paragraph 3 would be showing up in paragraph 1 and whatever sentence he was looking at could disappear without warning. It must have been like wearing kaleidoscope glasses.
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Jan 5, 2023 13:07
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I've said it before, but when Raising Steam was announced, I was hoping for the London underground, but in Ankh-Morpork. I read The Fifth Elephant as Christmas for the first time in years. The Colon plot in that is still golden. The Vimes saying along the lines of "Wrap that up in diplomacy and give it to them" is great.
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Jan 5, 2023 13:56
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Gambrinus posted:I've said it before, but when Raising Steam was announced, I was hoping for the London underground, but in Ankh-Morpork. Same - because isn't this exactly what is implied after Thud? The mine-sign resembles a London tube sign, the dwarfs have been tunnelling all under the city, they find a device that endlessly rotates with infinite torque to power all of it? And then all of a sudden it becomes a very literal history of the first railways just transplanted into Ankh Morpork and the surrounding countryside.
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Jan 6, 2023 13:38
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I remember when the next Moist book was going to be "Running Water". And when it was going to be "Raising Taxes".
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Jan 6, 2023 16:54
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As a longtime Discworld lover was there ever an explanation for why characters would occasionally Talk All Folksy Like either to hammer in the message of "people are dumb and full or prejudice" or, conversely, to deliver the moral of the story to the more intellectual characters?
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Jan 7, 2023 13:55
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The problems with Raising Steam are getting worse as the book goes - unnecessary scenes that are just flat. I'm quite amazed in fact at how rough it's getting
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Jan 7, 2023 14:36
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bewilderment posted:As a longtime Discworld lover was there ever an explanation for why characters would occasionally Talk All Folksy Like either to hammer in the message of "people are dumb and full or prejudice" or, conversely, to deliver the moral of the story to the more intellectual characters? Do you have any examples?
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Jan 7, 2023 20:03
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Jables88 posted:Same - because isn't this exactly what is implied after Thud? The mine-sign resembles a London tube sign, Oh, ffs
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Jan 7, 2023 21:47
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CommonShore posted:The problems with Raising Steam are getting worse as the book goes - unnecessary scenes that are just flat. I'm quite amazed in fact at how rough it's getting I've only read Raising Steam once. What was really jarring is the complete 180 the Patrician seemed to do, going from the sly manipulator to the barking tyrant.
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Jan 8, 2023 02:13
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Skios posted:I've only read Raising Steam once. What was really jarring is the complete 180 the Patrician seemed to do, going from the sly manipulator to the barking tyrant. Right? I had a commute with my RL friend who reads Discworld and we were discussing this exactly. It's as if the first draft is Vettinari hitting the key points and the outcomes necessary for the plot, and then the sly manipulation gets cajoled in through the revisions, but those revisions never happened.
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Jan 8, 2023 02:17
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Skios posted:I've only read Raising Steam once. What was really jarring is the complete 180 the Patrician seemed to do, going from the sly manipulator to the barking tyrant. I read that as misdirection. After all, he not only pulls off the massive misdirection that solves the plot, he manages to go undercover so he can play with his train for a while. By looking like he’s done a 180 he completely fools the people who expect him to act exactly like that. What’s missing are the scenes that show us what Vetinari is up to. Well, and the book itself is either unsubtle or frustratingly elusive.
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Jan 8, 2023 06:30
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sebmojo posted:Oh, ffs If you want a twofer on ‘oh gods’, and one I got today from Disc Coverers; “Feet of Clay” posted:“Fred Colon had reached the convivial-drunk stage. He turned to the man beside him. “’S good here, isn’t it,” he managed. Page 192 on my digital copy, but early enough into the book that ‘become two men’ and ‘end-teaser in a candle factory’ are phenomenally groan inducing foreshadowing.
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Jan 9, 2023 09:56
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ok I'm finished with Raising Steam General thoughts It has the overall structure and vibe of a discworld book. I'm glad that I was given the warning that it was not so good and the notes about how it was written with extreme involvement from the editor to create a coherent whole because it allowed me to forgive its weaknesses and appreciate it for what it is, rather than what it isn't. I'm pretty convinced by the discussion here and from what I read that it was essentially an unfinished novel, but that Terry's writing style was one of refinement and so instead of a book with gaps, an unfinished discworld novel is more of a flatter notebook sketch. It's not the worst experience if you go into it expecting to read that. More specific thoughts Certain scenes in particular popped out to me as placeholder/draft points. The scenes where the train gets attacked and dwarves are getting killed like extras in a bad Kung Fu movie were the least "discworld" moments of the whole. They needed heavy rethinking. The only places I can remember where mass carny death happens like that are comedy spots with The Silver Horde. The picaresque journey of the train to Uberwald was disjointed but worked scene by scene. I would have expected that a greater connected theme would have been written into them. Something that was being suggested but which the book never developed was Iron Girder's evolution, and I was expecting that was going to play into the problem of water and coal supplies, but it didn't happen. Likewise, the golems at the climax came out of nowhere. I don't remember those super golems from the end of Making Money being mentioned anywhere in the text before they Save The Day and get explained after the fact. That also seemed to me like something that would have been either written into the previous plot somehow, or resolved differently. The Goblin subway, with the goblins's compulsive tinkering seemed like a dangling, frayed thread that was pointing in that direction, either from an earlier draft, or something that was being developed to fill in or interact with the golems somehow. It could simply be that all of these moments were part of an effort to get every single Discworld thing into the book at one point or another. So there's that. I'm starting The Shepherd's Crown tonight, and probably Nation right after, then I'm going to cool it on Sir Terry for a while.
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Jan 11, 2023 05:04
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Shepherd's Crown is genuinely great. The Witches series is my favorite set of Discworld books, but those are all just prequels to the Tiffany Aching series in my opinion.
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Jan 11, 2023 05:07
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Wintersmith is still one of my favourite Discworld books.
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Jan 11, 2023 09:10
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SirSamVimes posted:Wintersmith is still one of my favourite Discworld books. And yet you’re not named TiffanyAching. Curious
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Jan 11, 2023 09:34
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"one of" edit: My favourite book in the series is Thief of Time so the inconsistency is still there.  The City Watch are my favourite character set though.
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Jan 11, 2023 09:37
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I've been enjoying the Tiffany Aching books thoroughly yeah. I'm now uhhh 3 or 4 chapters into the shepherd's crown and... drat we have some stuff going on hah
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Jan 11, 2023 15:03
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I’ve read The Shepherd’s Crown once right after it was published, a couple of months after Sir Terry passed, and I tried like a baby through most of it. I’m trying to add it back into my regular rotation when I reread the Tiffany Aching series but I’m going to need like a good week of time during it where I can just bust into tears without people seeing me.
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Jan 11, 2023 15:15
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Hot take, only the start of Shepherd's Crown is good, the rest is mediocre at best.
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Jan 11, 2023 15:58
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I thought the Raising Steam Deus ex machina was heavily and obviously foreshadowed, so chalk that one up to different readers, I guess. Nation is fantastic. Shepherd’s Crown is like going back to your childhood amusement park thirty years later. There’s still some magic, but a pall of tragedy and age hangs over the whole experience.
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Jan 11, 2023 16:57
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Gravitas Shortfall posted:Hot take, only the start of Shepherd's Crown is good, the rest is mediocre at best. Hotter take, I didn’t care for the Tiffany Aching books at all and wish he’d “finished” the Ankh Morpork storyline instead, if I’d been able to choose. Don’t think I’ve re-read any of them, which is not the case for any other of his books. I got both volumes of the Ankh Morpork Archives for Christmas, which collect all the stuff out of various Discworld diaries over the years. They’re really good, and might fill a gap for anyone looking for Pratchett they’ve not read before.
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Jan 11, 2023 16:59
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I liked most Tiffany Aching books and would rather Shepherd's Crown outright didn't exist. It would have been better as a sketch idea for the reader to imagine on their own. Nation is a good ending to a Pratchett readthrough though.
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Jan 11, 2023 20:27
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It took me a few years to read Shepherd's Crown because I wanted one last Discworld book to look forward to. I wound up rereading the entire series first leading into it, it felt like a very fitting capstone and also it made me cry. My favourite standalone book is Night Watch but the Tiffiny Aching books are absolutely my favourite "series", I even got a tattoo of the hare leaping through fire from I Shall Wear Midnight.
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Jan 12, 2023 03:18
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I've not read the Shepard's Crown and I probably never will, Raising Steam and Snuff were depressing enough.
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Jan 12, 2023 04:01
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I think my favourite standalone is Hogfather, but Granny is my favourite character and I think that Lords and Ladies, in context, is my top one stillyaffle posted:I've not read the Shepard's Crown and I probably never will, Raising Steam and Snuff were depressing enough. well I'll continue to live post about it as I read! If I have complaints I'll be forthright about them so maybe I can productively influence your ultimate decision.
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Jan 12, 2023 04:11
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It's me, in the person who cares about Agnes Nitt.
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Jan 12, 2023 04:13
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YggiDee posted:It's me, in the person who cares about Agnes Nitt. I like Agnes too! Carpe Jugulum was one of the first ones I read, and my single most quoted or paraphrased Pratchett line is from Masquerade (~"money is what you put in and opera is what you get out"~, reused often for things other than opera)
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Jan 12, 2023 04:16
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YggiDee posted:It's me, in the person who cares about Agnes Nitt. Me too! I would have liked to see more of her journey of self acceptance. She just kinda got tossed aside in favour of Tiffany in terms of witch stories.
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Jan 12, 2023 10:10
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