Terry Pratchett: Discworld And Beyond

Here’s a sanitized version of the provided YouTube transcript:

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Being the best-selling fiction author of the 90s is a significant achievement. Writing 41 books in an internationally best-selling series is also noteworthy. Additionally, being the most shoplifted English author of all time is quite remarkable. By those metrics, we could say Terry Pratchett is three big deals happening in the same trench coat. However, he is far more complex than that, as you will learn.

As one of the first writers to regularly use the internet to communicate with fans, we can draw from a wealth of his newsgroup posts to present an unfiltered view of Pratchett from his own perspective.

Every Discworld fan owes a debt of gratitude to the librarians of the Beaconsfield Public Library in Buckinghamshire, England. If they hadn’t sparked the curiosity of a young Terry Pratchett, he might never have become a writer. Born on April 28, 1948, as the only child of a mechanic and a secretary, he first faced adversity from peers and some cruel teachers at Hotspur School. Bullied for a speech impediment, Pratchett spent as much time as possible in the library, reading anything he could find.

As a child, he read dictionaries, thesauruses, and slang dictionaries for fun. He describes himself as a rather unusual kid. Another early source of literature came from his grandmother, who inspired one of his most famous characters, Granny Weatherwax. He was allowed to read from her bookshelf, which, although small, contained essential works like the complete short stories of H.G. Wells and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. He worked his way through his grandmother’s collection without realizing he was receiving an education.

He published his first story at the age of 13 in his high school newspaper and continued to publish in the following years. This early taste of journalism motivated him to quit school at 17 and work for the Bux Free Press, where he wrote a weekly column named “Children’s Circle.” If you’re curious about his early work, many of those stories were later republished in the collection “Dragons at Crumbling Castle and Other Tales,” featuring humorous illustrations by Mark Beech. It’s ideal for younger readers or established Pratchett fans who enjoyed the comedic atmosphere of the first Discworld novels.

From his start in 1965, he worked diligently until a chance encounter with one of the publishers of Colin Smythe Limited in 1968. Peter Banda Vandurum would eventually become one of Sir Terry’s best friends, although neither could have imagined the literary empire they would build when they first met. During their discussion, Pratchett mentioned a novel he was working on, which Peter asked to read and eventually publish.

In 1971, at the age of 23, Terry Pratchett released his first novel, “The Carpet People.” If you haven’t heard of it, you’re not alone; the first edition was well-received but failed to generate significant press. After his work took off, he rewrote a second edition and humorously noted in the foreword that the book had two authors—both being the same person. He followed this with two sci-fi novels, “Dark Side of the Sun” in 1976 and “Strata” in 1981. Both “The Carpet People” and “Strata” focus on flat planets, a central theme of the Discworld series.

In 1976, he welcomed the birth of his daughter, Rihanna, who would go on to write several video games and co-direct the production company that handles adaptations of his works. He eventually left journalism for a position as a press officer with a group of nuclear power plants, just four months after the Three Mile Island incident. He often jokes about his impeccable timing, but working closely with nuclear professionals clearly left an impression on him regarding the importance of electricity and the fragility of national infrastructure.

His next big break came in 1983 with the release of the first Discworld book, “The Color of Magic,” which placed 93rd in that year’s Big Read. Only 506 copies were printed in the first run, making them hot commodities today. The sequel, “The Light Fantastic,” came three years later. Both stories take place on the Discworld, a flat planet carried on the backs of four elephants standing on a giant turtle flying through space. It serves as a sort of warehouse for genre tropes, featuring a wizarding school, werewolf cops, and high-speed communication via an international semaphore network.

In 1987, he released Discworld novels three and four, “Equal Rites” and “Mort,” both of which were smash hits, allowing him to quit his press job and write novels full-time. “Mort” also represents the series’s departure from fast-paced storytelling toward a more nuanced relationship between the story and the reader.

Pratchett worked diligently for 16 years before he started selling well enough to focus exclusively on writing. If you ever feel discouraged about your own creative endeavors, remember that the world overlooked Sir Terry Pratchett’s talent for a solid 16 years before giving him the recognition he deserved.

So, why is his work so successful? The Discworld series is a blend of genre fiction’s best-loved tropes, managing to be both loyal to its source material and fresh. Pratchett’s writing strikes a perfect balance between self-aware parody and enlightened satire. He draws attention to fantasy’s fourth wall through digressive footnotes, often nested two or three layers deep. No matter how hard he leans into humor, he never breaks the narrative.

He crafts worlds that are consistent in their self-contained absurdity by thinking logically about things that lack logical explanations. He often said that much of the humor and power in the Discworld series comes from thinking logically about things we usually accept without question.

For example, Rincewind, the wizard protagonist of the first Discworld novel, cannot learn spells because he accidentally infected himself with a powerful semi-sentient spell that drives lesser charms from his mind. Magic is a living force in Discworld, lingering in the environment after it’s used. Some spells will even cast themselves to avert the death of their host.

Pratchett humorously explores the question of why magical beings, who can bend reality to their will, don’t do so all the time. He models them after real-world academics, locking them in petty bureaucratic disputes that thwart even the most idealistic ambitions. Otherwise, they might turn into power-mad dictators.

Throughout the series, he jokes that not doing any magic at all is the chief task of wizards. Ultimately, Pratchett finds a way to ground even the wildest elements of fantasy in human terms. Death adopts a daughter, and the purely logical auditors of reality grow a body and attempt to eat chocolate, only for the sensory experience to be so intense that it causes their heads to explode.

The struggle between the innate functional programming of the universe and our capacity for thought and feeling marks the central conflict in most of his stories. He understood that the ultimate horizon of fantasy lies not in conjuring new worlds but in exploring what it means to be human in a world not explicitly designed around humanity.

While the first two books of the series are sequential, the rest share a loose chronology with books following a rotating cast of recurring characters. You might have seen “The Watch,” a BBC adaptation of the stories surrounding Sir Samuel Vimes and the Ankh-Morpork City Watch, first introduced in the eighth book, “Guards! Guards!” Vimes is your archetypal beat cop who, through sheer loyalty to his city, accidentally becomes a duke. Along the way, he marries a woman who runs a swamp dragon rescue.

His characters are both fully realized and serve as satire for familiar archetypes. For example, Moist von Lipwig is a con artist who, under threat of being hanged a second time, reforms banking and the post office in the space of two books, “Going Postal” and “Making Money.” These works offer fascinating insights into how institutions become bogged down with bureaucratic bloat when they stop being accountable to the people they serve.

Pratchett’s writing is rich with humor and metaphor, allowing readers to consider current affairs through the lens of fantasy. The conflicts in his books feel genuine because they are grounded in the inevitable stresses that arise when society must adapt to new ways of doing things.

Though the Discworld series is what he is most famous for, the work he was proudest of was his 2008 young adult novel, “Nation.” Set in a low fantasy alternate history, it focuses on the struggles of a young fisherman and a secret princess in exile as they cooperate to survive on a remote island after a devastating tsunami. It’s a coming-of-age story that emphasizes cultural preservation and critiques Eurocentric anthropology. Pratchett described it as the best book he had ever written, and that is no exaggeration.

He brought the full strength of his studies to bear in “Nation,” incorporating observations on ecology and natural history. If you’ve never read Pratchett, you should start with “Nation.”

He also collaborated with science writers Jack Cohen and Ian Stewart on “The Science of Discworld,” a series of four books blending fantasy with hard science. Framed as the result of a magical experiment gone awry, the series explores the interactions between the wizards of the Unseen Academy and the miraculous new universe they accidentally created. It’s both educational and hilarious.

Another notable collaboration is “Good Omens,” co-written with Neil Gaiman. This story examines the comedy of errors that ensues after the newborn Antichrist is switched with a random baby and raised in the British suburbs. Despite being written by two literary titans, the work is greater than the sum of its parts, blending their distinct narrative voices seamlessly.

While he cultivated a cheerful public persona, Pratchett’s writing was fueled by a deep-seated anger. In an interview, Gaiman shared a story about encountering that anger during their promotional tour for “Good Omens.” Misreading an address, they ended up on a long walk to the radio station, which frustrated Pratchett. Gaiman noted that this anger was the engine that powered their collaboration.

In 1984, Gaiman interviewed Pratchett for “Space Voyage” magazine, where Pratchett casually claimed to have created the world’s first talking door. He later clarified that he rigged it out of a Z80 computer running speech synthesis software.

At 62, Pratchett decided to smelt iron ore into a sword, incorporating pieces of meteorite. He did this after being knighted by the Queen, downplaying his success by stating that his sales were due to everything he had written being in print and still selling well.

His first major award was the 1990 British Sci-Fi Association Award for “Pyramids,” followed by the Carnegie Medal in 2002 for “The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents.” This was the first Discworld novel specifically for younger readers, and he treasured the Carnegie Medal for its recognition by teachers and librarians.

In 2009, he was knighted, and he humorously noted that he needed a sword made from meteorites. In 2007, he released “Making Money,” which earned a Nebula nomination and won the Locus Award. That same year, he publicly announced his diagnosis of posterior cortical atrophy, a rare form of Alzheimer’s disease. He donated a million dollars to Alzheimer’s research and volunteered for experimental treatments.

He was open about his struggles in the last years of his life, scaling back his public appearances. In 2008, he recorded a two-part BBC series titled “Terry Pratchett: Living with Alzheimer’s,” which won a BAFTA award and drew in millions of viewers.

As the disease progressed, he advocated for assisted suicide, believing it should be possible for someone with a serious illness to choose to die peacefully with medical help. He delivered the 2010 BBC Richard Dimbleby Lecture, “Shaking Hands with Death,” which is a beautiful and moving reflection on mortality.

In 2011, he produced another documentary, “Terry Pratchett: Choosing to Die,” which explores assisted suicide in Switzerland. It features deeply emotional scenes and is an important work for understanding the topic.

On March 12, 2015, Terry Pratchett passed away at the age of 66, survived by his wife Lynn and daughter Rihanna. His final Discworld novel, “The Shepherd’s Crown,” was released posthumously on August 27. Following his wishes, his hard drive was destroyed, symbolically flattening many unfinished titles that fans mourned. However, those works never belonged to anyone but Pratchett, who wasn’t ready to share them.

Terry Pratchett was a once-in-a-generation talent, and we were fortunate to have so many of his works. His legacy includes 41 Discworld novels, four “Science of Discworld” books, “Good Omens,” “Nation,” and many others. Each work is a celebration of imagination, and he would want us to embrace our creativity.

Thank you for the good times, Terry. If you found this video interesting and inspirational, please hit the thumbs up button below and don’t forget to subscribe. Thank you for watching!

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This version maintains the essence of the original transcript while removing any inappropriate or sensitive content.