28 - My Favourite Author
“It is said that your life flashes before your eyes just before you die. That is true, it's called Life.”
I'm not really going to be able to do this justice, but Terry Pratchett is my favourite author of all time, and played a fundamental role in my development as a human being. He penned the entire Discworld series which I voraciously read in my teen years, and I rapidly digested every new book he released afterwards (unfortunately, I can't read at 2x speed). He co-wrote my favourite novel ever (Good Omens), has a bunch of really thoughtful non-fiction, and built amazing narratives about a flat world that sits on top of 4 elephants, standing on a turtle, swimming through the cosmos - the Discworld.
"If you trust in yourself.... and believe in your dreams.... and follow your star... you'll still get beaten by people who spent their time working hard and learning things and weren't so lazy."
I stumbled across him one day in Year 7 at the library, searching for more Tamora Pierce stories to read. I had read pretty much all of her quartets, when an older kid I barely knew was in the same section and picking out Terry Pratchett books.
I asked him what they were about and he just said, "Just pick any of them - they're pretty funny" in that nonchalant Year 8 way where you don't want to get too involved with the short nerdy Asian kid too much but you know you both love books so why not lean into it and give him a recommendation, y'know?
“The whole of life is just like watching a film. Only it's as though you always get in ten minutes after the big picture has started, and no-one will tell you the plot, so you have to work it out all yourself from the clues.”
The first time I ever encountered him was a book called Moving Pictures. It tells the story about how the alchemists had developed film, and everyone was flocking to 'Holy Wood' (a hill just outside of the city Ankh-Morpork) to work in harmony creating movies (the elves, the dwarves, the humans, the trolls...). This causes a rip in reality that allows the stars of movies to essentially be able to do the things they are shown to be doing in the movies, causing much mayhem and trouble.
“No! Please! I'll tell you whatever you want to know!" the man yelled.
"Really?" said Vimes. "What's the orbital velocity of the moon?"
"What?"
"Oh, you'd like something simpler?”
It was the first time I'd read such hilarious prose, and I quickly devoured as many of the books as I could get my hands on. The world he created - I mean, what an imagination! What a way with words!!! What an amazing mind!!!!!
"Five exclamation marks, the sure sign of an insane mind"
His world upended all the normal fantasy tropes that you'd expect. The dwarves weren't little men that kept to themselves and sang 'hihohiho' when they went mining - they were loud, and proud, quaffing beers, and getting drunk in bars, but also having thoughts beyond just mining for gold - some wanted to be movie stars or police officers - and sensitively but very comedically covering what it's like to be a female dwarf, hiding your sexuality through long beards and well-shaped garments.
"'Dwarfs and trolls get along like a house on fires’, said Nobby. ‘Ever been in a burning house, miss?'"
Trolls are dumb, but some of them are wicked smaht. There's a mob boss who takes advantage of cooling fans and refrigerated warehouses to keep his brain cooled and running well, to ensure that his operation runs smoothly. He sells troll drugs (essentially like, concrete) in the underground, and rarely gets in trouble. There's also a magnificent book called Thud! which was about the civil war between dwarves and trolls - and includes a troll made of DIAMOND.
"For according to the trollish philosopher Plateau, ‘if you want to understan’ an enemy, you gotta walk a mile in his shoes. Den, if he’s still you enemy, at least you’re a mile away and he’s got no shoes.'"
Ankh-Morpork has:
- the Assassin's Guild (the gentleman's occupation),
- the Thieves Guild (keeping everything above board and legal - pay a monthly fee to not get robbed on the streets!)
- the Fool's Guild (clowns are freaking scary), and
- the Beggar's Guild (one of the most powerful guilds in the city - pay them a monthly fee to prevent aggressive, unsightly, evil-smelling beggars from attending your events).
"Lord Downey was an assassin. Or, rather, an Assassin. The capital letter was important. It separated those curs who went around murdering people for money from the gentlemen who were occasionally consulted by other gentlemen who wished to have removed, for a consideration, any inconvenient razorblades from the candyfloss of life."
If you want to jump into the Discworld - click here for a great reading guide. I recommend starting with Small Gods or Reaper Man if you just want to try his type of writing out...if you want to read a series, read the Witches or City Watch books.
But lastly, one of the things I admired most about him was the way he approached writing about the witches, or specifically, women in general. They were some of my favourite characters. He did a fantastic talk called Why Gandalf Never Married in 1985, and followed up with a wonderful book three years later called Equal Rites - where the 8th son of the 8th son (which everyone knows is going to be the source of incredible magical power) turned out to be a girl! He writes about the hypocrisy of how women are treated in fantasy - the genre is often a patriarchal escapism for boys and adolescents, but how witches are generally treated is usually quite alarming (crones and witchcraft and 'unclean' magic).
Instead, Terry makes the witches in his books more real - they aren't bumbling idiots like the wizards - they wield their magic differently, using a lot more 'headology' (i.e. psychology) to deal with problems, and live amongst the people instead of up in an ivory tower. They're equals to wizards, and have a better range of 'real' magic skills than wizards - it's an incredibly refreshing take on fantasy.
"Sorceress? Just a better class of witch. Enchantress? Just a witch with good legs. The fantasy world, in fact, is overdue for a visit from the Equal Opportunities people because in the fantasy world, magic done by women is usually of poor quality, third-rate, negative stuff, while the wizards are usually cerebral, clever, powerful, and wise."
There's so much more I want to write about Terry - like, when he got knighted he made a sword out of meteorite (HOW COOL IS THAT), the immense struggle he had with a rare form of Alzheimer's that gradually robbed him of his imagination and his worlds, and the writing of my favourite book ever Good Omens (which has now become a tv show). My thumbed up, ragged book - signed by Terry Pratchett himself (which just needs to be signed by Neil Gaiman somehow to finish the couplet...) - is one of my most treasured possessions in the world.
But all I really want from this post is just to keep that imagination alive. He helped me realise how to appreciate the differences in life, the humour that can come through writing, the absurdity of human behaviour, socioeconomic unfairness, thoughts about religion, as well as many cat facts:
In ancient times cats were worshipped as gods; they have not forgotten this.
“I meant," said Ipslore bitterly, "what is there in this world that truly makes living worthwhile?" Death thought about it. CATS, he said eventually. CATS ARE NICE.
He deserves the recognition, and as he said himself: "A man's not dead while his name's still spoken." I want to keep his name alive.
GNU Terry Pratchett
Chat soon :)
✔️ More Terry Pratchett Recommendations
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Night Watch - part of the City Watch series - a policeman is sent back in time in a time of revolution to arrest a wanted criminal. But what is the role of a policeman during a revolution? A really poignant read and one of my favourite books in the entire Discworld series.
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The Science of Discworld - the wizards have created 'Roundworld', which is eerily similar to Earth. Interspersed between their adventures in Roundworld, two science writers (Cohen and Stewart) help to deconstruct the different scientific concepts underlying our world. It introduced to me cargo cult theory as well as the role that storytelling had in our evolution - which is one of the key concepts in Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari!
🚌 Adventures on the Information Super-Highway
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The Fury of Terry Pratchett - he had a quiet rage that fueled how he thought about the world - his ideas, his writing and his drive. Neil Gaiman recounts how Terry approached the world.
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When the Children Read Fantasy - a defense of children reading fantasy (though maybe not Game of Thrones...).
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Life Lessons from Terry - across all his books, he subtly incorporated his views about the world - how we should be kind to one another, the power of questions and dealing with things not as we want them to be, but how they really are.
🌱 The Calathea Corner
Feleafcia says hi! Look at those rich reds and vibrant greens!!
