Fandom Wibblings: Music/Literature/Fandom/Miscellaneous
Terry Pratchett at the Tattered Cover bookstore
Reported by Vivien
Terry came onstage dressed in black with a fine black hat. He is a very amiable gentleman, gray haired
and gray bearded. He started off by talking about how nice it was to finish a book and how sad it was
to finish a book at the same time. He told some funny stories about how you finished books in the old
days – you took about a day to print everything out on the old fashioned printers, another half day tearing
off the strips on the side of the old printer paper, and a little longer collating it and getting ready to send
it in. Now you just press send “and your life is torn apart.” He always has a stockpile of ideas jotted
down ready to go to start a new book as soon as the old one is done.
“No one has enough bookshelf space. I don’t want to talk to you if you do.” He’s having a library addition
added to his office and expects it to be filled in nine months. He’s also had an observatory built in his
backyard. He has a robot vacuum that he brought out to clean the observatory – he said it was a sci fi
dream come true.
There are two more Discworld novels coming up – an adult and a children’s. Night Watch,
The Wee Three Men, and Monstrous Regiments are the books he’s had the most fun reading.
He made mention of how dull his life is. He’s been married to the same woman for 34 years. Everyone
clapped and he said, “No no no, why applaud inertia?” That got a big laugh.
I didn’t realize that he really used to be a publicist for nuclear power plants. He started writing the
Discworld series then – “Life was so exciting (at work) that I’d come home frenetic and write 2,000
words just to come down.”
He talked a little about Good Omens with Neil Gaiman. He said that tour was fun because someone
else was on it with him. He answered a question about writing Good Omens. Neil was a journalist who
interviewed him. They hit it off, and Neil sent him this short story that didn’t have an ending. Terry wrote
back that he didn’t know how it ended but he knew how it continued. They’d send computer discs with
the new stuff they’d written back and forth to each other since email at that time was so difficult and slow.
They wrote it for fun, and they’ll never do it again. He said, “The sequel we will never write will be much
better than the one we tried to write.” When asked what it was like working with Neil, he said, “When I
was working with him, he wasn’t Neil Gaiman.” They still chat occasionally.
He said his favorite characters were Granny Weatherwax and Commander Vimes. He recommended
Mort, The Truth, and Wyrd Sisters as good books to start reading about Discworld. Not the first book,
he advised.
I got to ask the last question. I was sitting on the aisle towards the back and wearing a purple shirt so when
he recognized me, he said ‘One from the lady in ship’s counselor’s colors” which I thought was funny. I asked
what led him into Discworld, was it a specific image or incident? He said that was an excellent question to
end the session. Apparently he’s a big sci-fi/fantasy fan from way back and in the early 80’s fantasy had gotten
very derivative and boring. The writers had been “influenced by the people who’d been influenced by the
people who’d been influenced by the people who’d been influenced by Tolkien.” He wanted to have fun
with fantasy, to make it more than wizards and trolls. He said he was taking the ridiculous seriously. And then
by the time he wrote Mort he discovered plot. And then he was off and running.
He ended his speaking with an anecdote about going to Australia, driving out to Ayers Rock and beyond to
look at the stars. And discovering that “there were too damn many of them” to find the constellations. He finally
was able to see Orion, which boggled his mind until he realized that sometimes Orion can’t be seen in the
Northern Hemisphere because it dips below the horizon. He also realized that Orion was upside down and
had a feeling of disorientation where he grabbed the car to keep from falling upwards. He tries to keep that
sense of wonder and unbalance with him always.
He signed my copy of Good Omens and wrote “Burn this book” which I hope was a joke. He wasn’t very
talkative during the signing but I was back in the line, so I imagine he was getting tired by then. But he was
only supposed to write “To so and so” and sign, so I thought it was cool he wrote a bit more.
So it was a really neat experience, and I am really excited about reading more of the Discworld series.