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DON’T FEAR THE REAPER MAN
Mar. 13th, 2015 06:16 pmOdds are you know Sir Terry Pratchett has gone.
I can’t say I was a major fan, but I did read some of his books and liked them, so I should probably say something.
1. I remember when his first Discworld book came out. I didn’t like it much. I felt he was trying too hard to be Douglas Adams (who was a hot property at the time), and wasn’t all that funny – possibly because the main character (Rincewind the wizard) wasn’t very likeable. All of which goes to show how little I knew back in 1983.
2. The next time I encountered Pratchett was Good Omens, his collaboration with Neil Gaiman. This I liked very much, though mainly because I was a Gaiman fan by then.
3. The next time I tried Pratchett was in the early ‘00s. My boss at the time highly recommended The Truth (the 25th Discworld novel), which was Pratchett’s satirical take on the newspaper business. My boss – who had a background in the UK news industry – swore blind that it was dead-on accurate. So I tried it – and enjoyed it immensely. I read several more Discworld books after that, though I discovered that when you write a book series of 30+ installments, they can’t all be zingers.
4. Consequently I’ve tried to be a little more judicious in reading Pratchett since then. Overall I find the books entertaining but not always essential. I’ve also found that Pratchett is better when he has a specific segment of society to poke fun at (publishing, banks, rock music, the postal service, etc) rather than just poking fun at conventions in the fantasy genre. I will say that via Discworld, Pratchett created some of the most vivid and well realized characters in any genre, particularly policeman Sam Vimes and Lord Vetinari, the Patrician of Ankh-Morpork.
Respect.
A hat full of sky,
This is dF
I can’t say I was a major fan, but I did read some of his books and liked them, so I should probably say something.
1. I remember when his first Discworld book came out. I didn’t like it much. I felt he was trying too hard to be Douglas Adams (who was a hot property at the time), and wasn’t all that funny – possibly because the main character (Rincewind the wizard) wasn’t very likeable. All of which goes to show how little I knew back in 1983.
2. The next time I encountered Pratchett was Good Omens, his collaboration with Neil Gaiman. This I liked very much, though mainly because I was a Gaiman fan by then.
3. The next time I tried Pratchett was in the early ‘00s. My boss at the time highly recommended The Truth (the 25th Discworld novel), which was Pratchett’s satirical take on the newspaper business. My boss – who had a background in the UK news industry – swore blind that it was dead-on accurate. So I tried it – and enjoyed it immensely. I read several more Discworld books after that, though I discovered that when you write a book series of 30+ installments, they can’t all be zingers.
4. Consequently I’ve tried to be a little more judicious in reading Pratchett since then. Overall I find the books entertaining but not always essential. I’ve also found that Pratchett is better when he has a specific segment of society to poke fun at (publishing, banks, rock music, the postal service, etc) rather than just poking fun at conventions in the fantasy genre. I will say that via Discworld, Pratchett created some of the most vivid and well realized characters in any genre, particularly policeman Sam Vimes and Lord Vetinari, the Patrician of Ankh-Morpork.
Respect.
A hat full of sky,
This is dF
