Join the discussion
Write your take first — we'll ask for email only when you're ready to publish.
- Hacker News
- Man, I really miss Terry Pratchett too. He has been my favourite author for as long as I can remember (maybe Roald Dahl before that?). It helped having such a volume of work to go through at the time in my life where I was reading the most. I swear he has the most re-readable books too; so many small details and jokes that would be missed on a first pass.
GNU Terry Pratchett.
by ohmahjong - What a beautifully written article.
> What I miss, selfishly, is the next book. There were always going to be more.
> What I miss, less selfishly, is whatever Pratchett-shaped object is supposed to be reaching teenagers now, and isn’t.
I feel the first keenly. I have put off a re-read of Pratchett for several years now: I want to forget as much as possible, to have the pleasure of discovery again. But I have read them all so many times I know it will all be familiar.
I don't know what teenagers read today. I hope Pratchett is still there. Even as an adult, I found his writing encouraged a kind of kindness in me. He had a way of understanding human nature and, with zero preaching, making you consider how people different from you felt. I still remember when I encountered Cheery the first time and how beautifully Pratchett navigated the intricacies of gender. I was an adult who already believed in kindness, with friends who have their own experiences of gender and from whom I learned and who I tried to support, yet he still taught me something.
by vintagedave - I have everything he wrote (which includes a number of non-Discworld books, like Johnny and the Bomb, and The Bromeliad Trilogy).
I didn't especially like the Science of Discworld books that much, but he didn't really write them.
One character that showed up in every one of his Discworld books -to a point- was Death.
After Sir Terry got his diagnosis, I noticed that Death stopped showing up in the books.
- As a teenager, I found Terry Pratchett’s email (in a newsgroup IIRC?) and sent him a thank you note. I told him how much his books made me love reading. He answered me with a short and sweet email. It was an important internet moment for me!by futurecat
- Like many Pratchett fans I have not read the last published Discworld book, The Shepherd's Crown, because then I will have read them all.
The author of this piece hasn't read the Witches books! I'm jealous, they still have so much great Pratchett to get through.
by simonw - I discovered Terry Pratchett's books my summer in New York. I was a university student, and I'd gotten a job at eDonkey doing technical support. I lived in a crappy apartment in Brooklyn (this was circa 2004 or so), and worked near Union Square.
Quite a few days after work, or just on a weekend adventure I'd go to a bookstore a few blocks south of work and grab another Discworld book, and a slice of pizza from my favourite pizza shop labelled "Rays". I'd read some in a park, and explore.
I didn't know a lot of people in the city, filling days with Terry Pratchett was a great joy.
by preinheimer - Yeah, I miss Terry Pratchett too, but what I miss even most is reading an article and not wondering how much of it was written by AI. Imagine if Terry Pratchett was born in the 2000's and wrote in the 2020's. Well, he wouldn't. That's the thing. Imagine all the future Discworlds we'll never read because nobody ever writes anything anymore, because they've given up, and even if they did write there's so few chances to publish anyway, even before AI.
When there is clearly a huge demand for great stories and writing like Terry Pratchett's then why is it so hard to make a living out of it? And what happens now we made it even harder?
- How to get your AI company's blog to No. 1 on Hacker News:
1. Pick an author nerds like.
2. Tell Claude "Write an article about Terry Pratchett, in his style."
3. Don't even fix the faux-witty phrases that, upon closer inspection, make zero sense, like "Sir Terry Pratchett, who knew more about furniture than most", or "Most physics departments would settle for that." or "The Author, refusing to let the Narrator off the hook".
4. Bask in the praise for your wonderful writing.
by rogual