Usenet 1993 July/InfoMagic USENET CD-ROM July 1993.ISO/answers/pratchett/faq

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Subject: alt.fan.pratchett FAQ
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From: [e-mail] (Nathan Torkington)
Date: 30 Jun 1993 12:00:05 GMT
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----------------------------------------
Changes as at $Date: 93/06/17 13:21:22 $:
 * pterry's address in credits (man, some people are anal)
 * Johnny and the Dead released
 * crosspost to alt.answers
 * more under Gaiman
 * Men at Arms published in Nov.
 * quotes and sigs in the pratchett archives (hi Leo!)
 * more inconsistencies (see above for anal comment :)
----------------------------------------

This is the list of frequently asked questions (and their answers) for
the newsgroup alt.fan.pratchett.  There is biographical information
about Terry Pratchett, a list of his books and their ISBN numbers, as
well as information about his books, his collaborators and other fun
stuff.

Where possible, pointers to existing information (such as books,
magazine articles, and ftp sites) are included here, rather than
rehashing that information again.

If you haven't already done so, now is as good a time as any to read
the guide to Net etiquette which is posted to news.announce.newusers
regularly.  You should be familiar with acronyms like FAQ, FTP and
IMHO, as well as know about smileys, followups and when to reply by
email to postings.

This FAQ is currently posted to news.answers, alt.answers and
alt.fan.pratchett.  All posts to news.answers are archived, and it is
possible to retrieve the last posted copy via anonymous FTP from
rtfm.mit.edu as /pub/usenet/news.answers/pratchett/faq.  Those without
FTP access should send e-mail to [e-mail] with "send
usenet/news.answers/finding-sources" in the body to find out how to
get archived news.answers posts by e-mail.

This FAQ was mostly written by Nathan Torkington, with numerous
contributions by readers of alt.fan.pratchett (the Maestro himself
included).  Credits appear at the end.  Comments and indications of
doubt are enclosed in []s in the text.  Each section begins with forty
dashes ("-") on a line of their own, then the section number.  This
should make searching for a specific section easy.

Contributions, comments and changes should be directed to
    [e-mail]

----------------------------------------
List of Answers

1   Biographical Information
1.1  Personal History
1.2  How He came to write
1.3  Neil Gaiman
1.4  Josh Kirby
2   Eccentricities of Books
2.1  Eric
2.2  UK Bookstores
2.3  US Bookstores
2.4  Translations
2.5  Covers and the absence of Kirby
3   Computers and TP
3.1  His E-Mail address
3.2  His Setup
3.3  "The Colour of Magic" Game
4   Merchandising
4.1  The Royal Position
4.2  Discworld Models
4.3  Octarine
4.4  Discworld Maps
4.5  Truckers Video
4.6  Computer Games
4.7  The Mort Film
5   Related Files
5.1  The Terry Pratchett Bibliography
5.2  The Annotated Pratchett
5.3  The Pratchett Archives
6   Miscellany
6.1  Similar Authors
6.2  Rincewind's Name
6.3  More Rincewind
6.4  The Future
6.5  Inconsistencies
6.6  Appearances
6.7  The Hedgehog Song

----------------------------------------
1   Biographical Information

This section contains the biographical notes from his novels, some
notes about how he came to write, and short biographical notes about
Neil Gaiman and Josh Kirby.

----------------------------------------
1.1  Personal History

Terry Pratchett is an author of humourous fantasy-based
science-fiction novels.  He has been favourably compared to Douglas
Adams, P.G Wodehouse and Tom Sharpe.  A lot of people rather like his
books.

(This is stolen from his liner notes:)

    Terry Pratchett is, on average, a sort of youngish
    middle-aged.  He lives in Somerset with his wife and
    daughter, and long ago chose journalism as a career
    because it was indoor work with no heavy lifting.

    Beyond that he positively refuses to be drawn.  People
    never read these biographies anyway, do they?  They
    want to get on with the book, not wade through masses
    of prose designed to suggest that the author is really a
    very interesting person so look, okay, he wrote these
    other books, all right.  Most were also about the
    Discworld, and actually quite a lot of people liked
    them.

    He grows carnivorous plants as a hobby; they are a lot
    less interesting than people believe.

        * * *

    For those people who really need to know, Terry Pratchett
    was born in Buckinghamshire in 1948.  He's managed to avoid
    all the really interesting jobs authors take in order to
    look good in this sort of biography.  In his search for a
    quiet life he got a job as a Press officer with the Central
    Electricity Generating Board just after Three Mile Island,
    which shows his unerring sense of timing.  He now writes
    full time.  It's true about the carnivorous plants, though.

(and this one is stolen from Guards! Guards!:)

    Terry Pratchett was born in 1948 and is still not dead. He
    started work as a journalist one day in 1965 and saw his first
    corpse three hours later, work experience _meaning_ something
    in those days.  After doing just about every job it's possible
    to do in provincial journalism, except of course covering
    Saturday afternoon football, he joined the Central Electricity
    Generating Board and became press officier for four nuclear
    power stations.  He'd write a book about his experiences if he
    thought anyone would believe it.

     All this came to an end in 1987 when it became obvious that the
    Discworld series was much more enjoyable than real work.  Since
    then the books have reached double figures and have a regular
    place in the bestseller lists.  He's also written three books
    for children (the _Truckers_ trilogy).  Occasionally he gets
    accused of literature.

    Terry Pratchett lives in Somerset with his wife Lyn and daughter
    Rhianna.  He says writing is the most fun anyone can have by
    themselves.

The Carpet People adds:
    [TP lives in Somerset] where he grows carnivorous plants and
    tries to make computers do things they were never intended to
    do.

Only You Can Save Mankind:
    [TP lives in Somerset], and says he writes for anyone old
    enough to understand.

Lords and Ladies:
    He also grows carnivorous plants and thinks the world could
    use more orang-utans.

----------------------------------------
1.2  How He came to write

He started writing short stories, several of which were published.
His first, "The Hades Business", which was published in Science
Fantasy #60 (vol 20, 1963) was the first story he ever wrote.  He got
10/10 for it (the first time he had gotten 10/10 for anything except
for a painting which his teacher had *thought* were two dinosaurs
fighting) and it was published in the school magazine.

There it would have ended, except for his school headmaster who
addressed an assembly shortly afterward and announced that he didn't
approve of the "moral tone" of the story.  Well, the magazine, which
would have struggled to break even, sold out within 15 minutes.  He
learned an important lesson, right then - by writing it is possible to
infuriate your enemies as well as please your friends.

He then had the story typed up by his Aunt and sold it to Science
Fantasy, and with the profits bought a typewriter.  This his first act
as an income-earner was to fire his Aunt.  His mother rewarded this
Thatcherite attitude and paid for his typing lessons and he was on his
way.

----------------------------------------
1.3  Neil Gaiman

Neil Gaiman is an sf author whose credits include:
 * the _Sandman Comics_ (monthly, 3 collections so far:
   - Preludes and Nocturnes [1 85286 326 9],
   - The Dolls House [0 930289 59 5] and
   - Dream Country [1 56389 016],
   - Seasons of Mist [1 56389 041 0])
 * _Black_Orchid_ (a one-off comic in 3 parts, also now collected in a
   single graphic novel [1 85286 336 6] published by Titan Books),
 * _Violent_Cases_ [1 85286 372 2] published by Titan Books, or
   [0 9509568 64] published by Escape.
 * _Signal_to_Noise_ [0 575 05284 8] published by VG Graphics.  This
   was originally serialised in _The_Face_ magazine.  Dark Horse
   Comics recently released in the US [1 878574 43 4].
 * _The Books of Magic_ [1 56389 082 8], separate books I to IV,
   illustrated by various artists, printed by DC Comics.  The ISBN #
   is for the collection.
 * _Temps_ (a collection of superhero short stories which claims to be
   "Devised by Neil Gaiman and Alex Stewart" [0 14 014560 5]), a
   sequel being _Eurotemps_ [0 14 016713 7],
 * _Ghastly Beyond Belief_ (an anthology of truly awful SF)
   [0-09-936830-7],
 * _The Weerde_ [0 14 014562 1] devised by Mary Gentle, Neil Gaiman &
   Roz Kaveney
 * _Villains!_ [0 14 014561 3] created by Mary Gentle & Neil Gaiman
 * and _Don't Panic: The Official Companion to The Hitch-Hiker's Guide
   To The Galaxy_ [1 85286 0138 8].

----------------------------------------
1.4  Josh Kirby

Josh Kirby is an artist who has been drawing covers for many years
now.  He has done the covers for (among others) Terry Pratchett, Craig
Shaw Gardner, Esther Friesner, Dan McGirt and the new editions of Tom
Holt's novels.

He also illustrated the Discworld (sort-of picture) book "Eric".  He
has at least two poster books out, one with large versions of the
first seven Discworld covers.  One is "In the Garden of Unearthly
Delights", published by Paper Tiger in 1991.  It's ISBN is
1-85028-154-8.  It costs #9.95 (pounds sterling) and runs to 143 pages
of artwork.  The other is "The Josh Kirby Poster Book" (they obviously
paid large sums to an advertising agency for that title) published by
Corgi in 1991. [ISBN?]

----------------------------------------
2   Eccentricities of Books

Terry's books are available to varying degrees in the different
countries around the world.  Enclosed here is some information on
which books were released where, as well as some addresses for stores
that are reliable.

----------------------------------------
2.1  Eric

Eric wasn't released in the US, because Roc were uneasy about the big
edition and didn't buy it; people are talking to them now about the
mass market version.  (source, Terry Pratchett post on 8 Aug 1992).

----------------------------------------
2.2  UK Bookstores

Andromeda Books,
84 Suffolk Street,
Birmingham,
BA1 1TA,
UK

Forbidden Planet,
11 (I think, but what the hell, it'll find them) New Oxford Street,
London

----------------------------------------
2.3  US Bookstores

[?]
----------------------------------------
2.4  Translations

[?]

----------------------------------------
2.5  Covers and the absence of Kirby

Later US editions don't have Kirby covers.  Apparently the Kirby
covers make for confusion with Craig Shaw's Gardner's "humourous"
fantasy (which isn't at all in Terry's league).  This is only true of
Sourcery and later books.  The Colour of Magic through Mort had the
same Kirby covers as the UK editions.

Non-Kirby covers are coming out on reprints of his earlier Discworld
books, in the hopes of attracting an audience that would otherwise be
put off by the Kirby covers.

----------------------------------------
3   Computers and TP

Terry is not only interested in computers, but is also on the net.

----------------------------------------
3.1  His E-Mail address

His e-mail address is [e-mail].  He warns that
"people who email me direct will get terse answers to the 'Hey, you're
not really TP, are you?' type questions, which still seem to be
turning up -- and I also tend to get a bit brief when its questions
that get regularly aired in the conference.  Apart from that, I'm a
real polite correspondent -- if I have time ...".

----------------------------------------
3.2  His Setup

He owns the fastest 486 he could buy, he writes with WordPerfect 4.2
and uses a laptop when travelling.  He doesn't like windows or mice.

He also used to own an Amstrad, and is a fan of the classic isometric
perspective games, _Batman_ and _Head Over Heels_.

----------------------------------------
3.3  "The Colour of Magic" Game

There was a game called "The Colour of Magic" released by Delta 4,
which contained passages straight from the book.  It was available for
8-bit machines, the Spectrum and C64.  It was produced by the company
behind _Bored of the Rings_, _Robin of Sherlock_ and _The Boggit_,
using the Quill adventure creator.  It even had a picture of Death
when you died, wearing a "Have a nice day" badge.

----------------------------------------
4   Merchandising

There are a lot of informal efforts at merchandising around, but no
really commercial ones.  This section explains why.

----------------------------------------
4.1  The Royal Position

         "'Everything works if people are sensible': It's all down to
          who's doin what, for whom, and what might loosely be called
          the spirit of the whole thing.  Fans doing things for other
          fans, such as Octarine does in the UK, (t-shirts and stuff
          for cost+) -- that's fine.  And I've let people do more
          than that to raise funds for a con.  I'd only get twitchy
          if it looked as though we were in real merchandising
          territory -- four-colour sweatshirts in Forbidden Planet,
          adverts in magazines ... and my concern there would be as
          much about fans getting value for money as anything else."

----------------------------------------
4.2  Discworld Models

Thanks to [e-mail] (G.D.Staines) for this:

Discworld characters - everyone from Death to Great A'Tuin himself (or
herself) - step (or crawl) out of the page in a new range of models by
  Bernard Pearson,
  ClareCraft,
  Woolpit,
  Suffolk
  IP30 9SH.

Tel:[phone] for a list of stockists or further information.

----------------------------------------
4.3  Octarine

Terry has this to say:
  The officially unofficial Not-the-Terry-Pratchett-Fan-Club.  The guy
to write to is Chris Tregenza, 14 Runswick Drive, Wollaton,
Nottingham, NG8 1JN.  It's like this: a couple of years ago they
approached me, and I said I thought it would be an amazingly bad idea
(I mean, what do you do after issue three of the magazine: 'Um.  He's
done another book.  It's great/okay/ not as good as the last one IMHO.
Um.  Is he losing more hair, or what?'  So I suggested they broaden
the base to include humourous sf/fantasy generally.  And it seems to
have worked.  They resemble ZZ9 a lot and there's an overlap of
members; I'd say it's probably more an organisation that people who
like the DW books might enjoy belonging to rather than a fan club).  I
go along to their birthday meetings (to merry cries of "Who's he?",
"Throw him out!" and so on).  But there's no learned articles on the
DW, no signed photos of The Master, no 'official news' ... and that's
fine by me.

----------------------------------------
4.4  Discworld Maps

A map of A-M is being prepared for the Discworld Companion.  The guy
doing it had to pinpoint the Assassins' Guild, for example, from
references in six different books.  Worked, too.  (Don't ask when it's
coming out -- one day ...).  Did you know there are no fewer than
eight eating/drinking places mentioned in A-M?  TP didn't.

More information - the guy doing it is Steven Briggs (the chap who is
also adapting books for theatre) and it will probably, weighing one
thing with another, in the balance of circumstance, given full
reservation and understanding that the world is an uncertain place, be
out in late '93.

----------------------------------------
4.5  Truckers Video

There is a video of _Truckers_ available.  The details are:
  Thames Television International, Video Collection International
  VHS TV 8159, 110 minutes, VHS-PAL, price: approx. 8 pounds.

----------------------------------------
4.6  Computer Games

See section 3.3.  The company went out of business, so currently there
are no Discworld computer games.

Terry wants you to seek his OK before you write Discworld MUDs.  His
e-mail address is in section 3.1

----------------------------------------
4.7  The Mort Film

A production company was put together and there was US and
Scandinavian and European involvement, and I wrote a couple of script
drafts which wet down well and everything was looking fine and then
the US people said "Hey, we've been doing market research in Power
Cable, Nebraska, and other centes of culture, and the Death/skeleton
bit doesn't work for us, it's a bit of a downer, we have a prarm with
it, so lose the skeleton".  The rest of the consortium said, did you
read the script?  The Americans said: sure, we LOVE it, it's GREAT,
it's HIGH CONCEPT.  Just lose the Death angle, guys.

Whereupon, I'm happy to say, they were told to keep on with the
medication and come back in a hundred years.

Currently, since the amount of money available for making movies in
Europe is about sixpence, the consortium is looking for some more
intelligent Americans in the film business.  This may prove difficult.

It could have been worse.  I've heard what Good Omens was looking like
by the time Sovereign's option mercifully ran out -- set in America,
no Four Horsemen...oh god.
 (from Terry himself, 2 Nov 1992)

----------------------------------------
4.8  Plays

The Guards! Guards! play (early June next year):

Write to:
Stephen Briggs,
23 Elms Drive,
Old Marston,
Oxford OX3 ONN

... who is in the bemused state of taking tons of orders ALREADY.

In the wind also are another version of MORT and, aha, a musical based
on Wyrd Sisters.  There are also various tentative plans for DW
productions in Australia and California (GAG ME WITH A SPOON).  As
soon as things are firm, they'll get posted here and on CIX in the UK.
  (Terry himself, 29 Oct 1992)

MORT...the Play.

The three-thespian version of Mort was by the Flying Thing Theatre
Company of Liverpool and was on in that city earlier this year.  I've
just heard that they're well into planning a tour in SW England for
the first three months of '93.  They're worth seeing.  I laughed a lot
(even though they're partly mime artists).

As soon as I hear their finalised tour dates, I'll post them here and
on CIX.
  (Terry himself, 2 Nov 1992)

----------------------------------------
5   Related Files

Terry is a popular chappie.  Here are some other electronically
available documents which you might like to look at.

----------------------------------------
5.1  The Terry Pratchett Bibliography

Circulated by
    [e-mail]
this contains ISBN numbers, titles and blurbs for all TP's books.
It should be available (soon) via FTP as
    ftp.uu.net:/pub/usenet/news.answers/pratchett/bibliography
This is posted around the first and fifteenth of every month to
    alt.fan.pratchett
    alt.answers
and    news.answers

----------------------------------------
5.2  The Annotated Pratchett

Circulated by
    [e-mail]
(Leo Breebaart), this explains the subtleties of Terry's works.  It is
currently at v5.0 and can be retrieved via anonymous FTP from the
Pratchett Archives.

----------------------------------------
5.3  The Pratchett Archives

Leo Breebaart ([e-mail]) maintains an FTP site of
Pratchett related material that is mirrored around the world.  The
home site is:
    ftp.cp.tn.tudelft.nl:pub/pratchett

It is mirrored in the USA by
    theory.lcs.mit.edu:/pub/pratchett
    rincewind.mech.virginia.edu:pub/pratchett
and in Australia by
    ftp.uts.edu.au:/Mirror/Pratchett

This FAQ, the Annotated Pratchett, the bibliographic information,
rules for Cripple Mr Onion, lyrics to the Hedgehog Song, and gifs of
all the covers are kept on these sites as well as quote files and .sig
files.

----------------------------------------
6  Miscellany

Here's some stuff that didn't fit into any other category.

----------------------------------------
6.1  Similar Authors

P.G. Wodehouse, Douglas Adams, Jerome K. Jerome, Robert Rankin, Tom
Sharpe, Tom Holt, Calvin Trillin, P.J O'Rourke and Dave Barry are some
people whose styles are similar.

----------------------------------------
6.2  Rincewind's Name

Terry himself pronounces it to rhyme with "Mince pinned" and in Eric,
Rincewind meets his ancestor whose translated name means "Washer
[Rinser?] of Winds".  Evidence would then tend to point to this
pronounciation.

----------------------------------------
6.3  More Rincewind

Terry has said that he will write another Rincewind novel.  When?
Well, that's a different question :-) [more?]

----------------------------------------
6.4  The Future

The next DW book will be a sequel to Guards! Guards!, containing a
slightly expanded City Watch (a troll and a dwarf now on the strength
as a result of affirmative action hiring procedures) Captain Vimes'
wedding day, and Carrot learning a thing or two....  The title is "Men
at Arms", and it will be published in November.

----------------------------------------
6.5  Inconsistencies

Well, he *is* fallible.  Known inconsistencies are:
 * the number of eyes that Greebo has in _Witches_Abroad_
 * in _TCOM_, All's Fallowe is the one night of the year when witches
   stay home in bed.  In _Wyrd_Sisters_ however, this occurs on
   Hogswatch night.
 * there are inconsistencies about smells: in _TLF_, Rincewind asks
   what a smell is, and Twoflower thinks that it is bacon.  Later on,
   however, Twoflower is described as having "no sense of smell".
   Rincewind, in _Sourcery_, is an Ankh-Morporkian who (like all
   Ankh-Morporkians) has no sense of smell.
 * there are lots of geographical inconsistencies, which caused TP to
   preface _Sourcery_ with "This book does not contain a map.  Please
   feel free to draw your own".  One of the major inconsistencies
   which few people spot is that given the size of the Disc, and the
   distance the sun would therefore need to travel around it in 24
   hours, and that light travels at the speed of sound in the high
   magical field, then the sun is actually orbiting the Disc at twice
   the speed of its own light.
 * When Rincewind meets Death in Ankh-Morpork, in _The_
   Colour_Of_Magic_, people walk through Death.  Whereas later on,
   people are described as avoiding him.
 * In TCOM, Death kills a fly.  The Death from Mort and later books
   would never do such a thing - it changes reality.
 * In TCOM, Liessa is referred to as "Liessa" right through the
   book, until the bit where she rescues Hrun from the long drop off
   Twoflower's dragon.  Then she gets called "Lianna".
 * REAPER MAN: Miss Flitworth refers to "[her] Reggie" about midway
   through the book, but refers to "Rufus" when the two lovers souls
   are finally reunited.

----------------------------------------
6.6  Appearances

Book signings:

None.  We cut his arms off so he wouldn't sign any more books and he'd
just get on with writing them.

Cons:

Finncon - Helsinki, August 93
Orycon - Portland, Oregon, November 1993

----------------------------------------
6.7  The Hedgehog Song

It would appear that there was a Hedgehog song around the '20s, if not
before, with the same refrain as the Discworld song.  However, Terry
says "since I doubt it ever could have been in print, I can bravely
plead parallel evolution at most. There is a certain, how shall I put
it, natural cadence to the words."

----------------------------------------
Credits

Nathan Torkington ([e-mail]), Adrian N Ogden
([e-mail]), Vicky White, PR James
([e-mail]), Adrian Waterworth
([e-mail]), Chris Stratford
([e-mail]), Steven Ellis ([e-mail]),
Lesley Walker ([e-mail]) Leo Breebaart
([e-mail]), Darkstar ([e-mail])
Harry Broomhall ([e-mail]), Jonathan Lennox
([e-mail]), Martin V. Walser
([e-mail]), Melanie Dymond ([e-mail]), All
The Madmen ([e-mail]), Daniel Veditz
([e-mail]), Dhanesh ([e-mail]), D.J.T.
([e-mail]), Carl Edman
([e-mail]), Jerzy Michal Pawlak
([e-mail]), Michael Norrish ([e-mail]),
Terry Pratchett ([e-mail]), Malcolm Mladenovic
([e-mail]), Klaus Kluge ([e-mail]), D N Crow
([e-mail]), Andrew Conway ([e-mail]),
Jan van 't Ent ([e-mail]), Simon Read
([e-mail]), Ralf E. Stranzenbach ([e-mail]),
Mark Cook ([e-mail]), G. Wilde (no net access), Kai Siering
([e-mail]), Paul M Schwartz ([e-mail]),
Mike Kerstetter ([e-mail]), Martin Carstensen
([e-mail]), John Rickard ([e-mail]), Paul
Ashley ([e-mail]), Matthew Duhan
([e-mail]), Benedikt Heinen
([e-mail]), Heiko Rath ([e-mail]),
Ingo Brandauer ([e-mail]), Thomas Wolmer
([e-mail]), Steve Leahy ([e-mail]),
Marek Repinski ([e-mail]), [e-mail]
(Andrew Stoker),[e-mail] (Si Rowe), Juan Alonso
([e-mail]), James Ojaste
<[e-mail]>, Rui Madeira
([e-mail]), Tom Pearson <[e-mail]>, Al
Crawford ([e-mail]), [e-mail] (Orin
Davyd-Leslie THOMAS), Tom Koelman <[e-mail]>,
[e-mail], [e-mail] (Anthony Naggs).