Sad news for fantasy/comedy fans: Terry Pratchett has early-onset Alzheimer's

Tis sad indeed. I hope it progresses very slowly in his case. The world will be less verbose without his keen sense of humor in writing.

Good to hear he's still ticking along nicely...although now I feel guilty that I've fallen behind in reading the more recent discworld books.

spider_j wrote:

and the revelation that Sir Terry's daughter is a games writer.

I thought that was common knowledge? She used to review games for PC Zone and had a photo-shopped picture of herself in Garret's thief-cowl as her magazine portrait thingy

Yeah, she wrote Overlord and iirc was involved with Mirror's Edge. I've definitely seen her credited elsewhere, just can't recall.

Her twitter feed isn't super active, but is delightfully nerdy.

Whew. Thought this might be a RIP rez.

garion333 wrote:

Whew. Thought this might be a RIP rez.

Haha, yeah I had the same moment of sheer terror. Bit of a relief to be honest, I'm hoping he'll be one of those guys that just hangs on long after he is meant to have shuffled off.

After all, him and Death do have a kind of rapport...

I'm also super happy to hear Rhianna will take over Discworld after he's gone, I was always hoping that'd be the case.

spider_j wrote:

Arise, for an interview

Thank you!

I didn't enjoy Unseen Academicals as much as his other recent novels. I wasn't sure if that had to do with the Alzheimer's or it was just me. I keep meaning to read Snuff, as I love the city watch novels, but other books keep getting in the way.

Arise, for an interview from The New Statesman with some interesting tidbits, the future of the Discworld, a TV show, swords made from meteors, and the revelation (EDIT: To me, at least!) that Sir Terry's daughter is a games writer.

5 years later, and nothing has stopped him. I can't say how much I admire this man.

Strewth wrote:

I didn't enjoy Unseen Academicals as much as his other recent novels. I wasn't sure if that had to do with the Alzheimer's or it was just me. I keep meaning to read Snuff, as I love the city watch novels, but other books keep getting in the way.

Neither one were great by Discworld standards, but all the stuff he's done with Moist and industrializing Discworld has been pretty brilliant. I don't think it's affected his mind so much. But in the recent documentary he did about assisted suicide, he casually let it drop that he can't actually type his own novels anymore; he dictates them to a guy he's hired. I do feel like that has made his recent works slightly klunkier than before. It's hard to get that mind meld between brain and written word going when there's some other fellow there asking you if you just said "whom" or "womb."

Strewth wrote:

I didn't enjoy Unseen Academicals as much as his other recent novels. I wasn't sure if that had to do with the Alzheimer's or it was just me. I keep meaning to read Snuff, as I love the city watch novels, but other books keep getting in the way.

UA definitely wasn't up to par. But if you did like the other Vimes books, Snuff is worth the time. I phrase it that way because it wasn't really a City Watch book (Jingo, for example, was a good example of a City Watch book that spent a lot of time outside the city), but it was certainly a Vimes book, much like Thud or the Fifth Elephant.

Outside the Discworld, he also recently wrote Dodger (a straight historical novel, set in Victorian London, with no fantasy elements but very much in the Discworld style), and The Long Earth in collaboration with Stephen Baxter, a science fiction novel about parallel worlds (I just got that one and haven't read it yet).

kazooka wrote:
Strewth wrote:

I didn't enjoy Unseen Academicals as much as his other recent novels. I wasn't sure if that had to do with the Alzheimer's or it was just me. I keep meaning to read Snuff, as I love the city watch novels, but other books keep getting in the way.

Neither one were great by Discworld standards, but all the stuff he's done with Moist and industrializing Discworld has been pretty brilliant. I don't think it's affected his mind so much. But in the recent documentary he did about assisted suicide, he casually let it drop that he can't actually type his own novels anymore; he dictates them to a guy he's hired. I do feel like that has made his recent works slightly klunkier than before. It's hard to get that mind meld between brain and written word going when there's some other fellow there asking you if you just said "whom" or "womb."

Rob Wilkins has been his assistant for years, and Terry uses dictation software quite frequently. From the tone of his more recent books, I think that, rather than the Alzheimer's itself, the contemplation of his mortality has flavoured his work a bit. I haven't really felt that any of his novels have been any clunkier than before.

spider_j wrote:
kazooka wrote:
Strewth wrote:

I didn't enjoy Unseen Academicals as much as his other recent novels. I wasn't sure if that had to do with the Alzheimer's or it was just me. I keep meaning to read Snuff, as I love the city watch novels, but other books keep getting in the way.

Neither one were great by Discworld standards, but all the stuff he's done with Moist and industrializing Discworld has been pretty brilliant. I don't think it's affected his mind so much. But in the recent documentary he did about assisted suicide, he casually let it drop that he can't actually type his own novels anymore; he dictates them to a guy he's hired. I do feel like that has made his recent works slightly klunkier than before. It's hard to get that mind meld between brain and written word going when there's some other fellow there asking you if you just said "whom" or "womb."

Rob Wilkins has been his assistant for years, and Terry uses dictation software quite frequently. From the tone of his more recent books, I think that, rather than the Alzheimer's itself, the contemplation of his mortality has flavoured his work a bit. I haven't really felt that any of his novels have been any clunkier than before.

They've certainly been a bit darker lately, but I don't consider it a bad thing at all. Night Watch is often considered his darkest book, and it also happens to be my favourite.

Could the problem with Unseen Academicals be that it focuses on soccer and British culture in general lot more heavily than usual? I had some troubles grokking Soul Music when I read it many years ago because it focused heavily on older music culture I just wasn't that familiar with or interested in. I still enjoyed it, but had a harder time understanding the satire and references.

I really dug UA and thought Snuff was fantastic.
I'm also a huge Vimes fan, and even have a 6 o'clock rule o my own, that I just don't break. 6 o'clock is important enough that I talk about it with prospective employers during followup interviews. It is important.

Anyway, I don't think the later novels are lacking at all... I think Pratchett is growing. You may not like it, but I believe it's just as good as it ever was.

Snuff in particular had some klunky moments. Maybe I was just hyper-aware of it since it was one of the first books of his that I had read with the knowledge that he had Alzheimers, but there was definitely klunk.

Snuff had some clunky bits for sure, but it also had some pretty amazing moments. A lot of the goblin stuff was absolutely heartbreaking.

I'm a 40 year old man that loves Tiffany Aching.

I've always like Granny Weatherwax slightly more than Vimes.

It wasn't the British culture or soccer in UA, I know enough about both to get by, even if I don't catch or get all of the references. I think there was something off putting about the Orc storyline. Also, while I love the books that have any sort of wizard subplot, there were things that didn't quite sit right.

I'm not saying I didn't enjoy it, but it's low in my ranking of his novels. Somewhere with his early witch novels, maybe a bit higher than Equal Rites and Witches Abroad. I'm frequently rereading his books though, even the ones at the bottom of my list, although not as often.

Somewhere around 15 years ago I had the fortune to come across the Annotated Pratchett File on the Internet. This was a brilliant piece of work because it explained all sorts of obscure references, by book and page number, and there were hundreds of them. It made me think about certain passages in a new light, and over the years I've reread the novels dozens of times.

I think that's all fair, Strewth. Perhaps it's Terry's love for underdog character that end up being a secret badass? It's a cool sort of character to tell a story about, and he does it very well, but he does tell that story a lot.

I'm not the only person who read a headline about this and thought "Since when did Rihanna like Discworld?", right?

Reaper Man is still the best Prachett book.

Chumpy_McChump wrote:

Reaper Man is still the best Prachett book.

Naw. Hogfather.

I'm partial to Small Gods, but that's only because it was my introduction to the series.

Thief of Time is clearly the best discworld novel. It's excellently paced and has real page turning ending that isn't so common in his books.

CaptainCrowbar wrote:

The Long Earth in collaboration with Stephen Baxter, a science fiction novel about parallel worlds (I just got that one and haven't read it yet).

Finished it a little while ago. It was....

Spoiler:

depressing and ended before I wanted to be done with the story.

DanB wrote:

Thief of Time is clearly the best discworld novel. It's excellently paced and has real page turning ending that isn't so common in his books.

This. I like to love all the Discworld novels, but the only one close to Thief of Time for me is Small Gods.

Chumpy_McChump wrote:

Reaper Man is still the best Prachett book.

I'm self-editing:

The Death story line in Reaper Man is still the best Prachett book. The rest of it was good, but not nearly as good.

thejustinbot wrote:
DanB wrote:

Thief of Time is clearly the best discworld novel. It's excellently paced and has real page turning ending that isn't so common in his books.

This. I like to love all the Discworld novels, but the only one close to Thief of Time for me is Small Gods.

I tend to come and go from Discworld novels so whenever I come back to them I've usually got 3 or 4 new ones to read at once. Thief of Time was the absolute stand out book among the particular batch I read together.

Rezzy wrote:
CaptainCrowbar wrote:

The Long Earth in collaboration with Stephen Baxter, a science fiction novel about parallel worlds (I just got that one and haven't read it yet).

Finished it a little while ago. It was....

Spoiler:

depressing and ended before I wanted to be done with the story.

I quite enjoyed that book, it's based on a great concept. It's meant to be a series, so hopefully we'll get more Long Earth books before, uh... Death meets his maker.

An extract from 'A slip of the Keyboard - Collected Non-Fiction of Terry Pratchett'.

The introduction by Neil Gaiman.
"Terry Pratchett isn't Jolly - He's Angry"

The anger is always there, an engine that drives. By the time Terry learned he had a rare, early onset form of Alzheimer’s, the targets of his fury changed: he was angry with his brain and his genetics and, more than these, furious at a country that would not permit him (or others in a similarly intolerable situation) to choose the manner and the time of their passing.

And that anger, it seems to me, is about Terry’s underlying sense of what is fair and what is not. It is that sense of fairness that underlies Terry’s work and his writing, and it’s what drove him from school to journalism to the press office of the SouthWestern Electricity Board to the position of being one of the best-loved and bestselling writers in the world.

He will rage, as he leaves, against so many things: stupidity, injustice, human foolishness and shortsightedness, not just the dying of the light. And, hand in hand with the anger, like an angel and a demon walking into the sunset, there is love: for human beings, in all our fallibility; for treasured objects; for stories; and ultimately and in all things, love for human dignity.
I rage at the imminent loss of my friend. And I think, “What would Terry do with this anger?” Then I pick up my pen, and I start to write.

I've always found angry Pratchett much more interesting to read than comedy Pratchett, which is probably why anything related to Commander Vimes and Granny Weatherwax were always my favorites. Night Watch especially...holy hell that's a tough read in places