From: gnat@kauri.vuw.ac.nz (Nathan Torkington)
Subject: alt.fan.pratchett FAQ
Originator: gnat@kauri.vuw.ac.nz
Reply-To: pratchett-faq@vuw.ac.nz
Organization: Dept. of Comp. Sci., Victoria Uni. of Wellington, New Zealand.
Supersedes: <pratchett-faq_717893141@kauri.vuw.ac.nz>
Date: Wed, 14 Oct 1992 11:00:15 GMT
Followup-To: alt.fan.pratchett

Archive-name: pratchett/faq
Maintained-by: pratchett-faq@vuw.ac.nz <Nathan Torkington>

----------------------------------------

This is the list of frequently asked questions (and their answers) for
the newsgroup alt.fan.pratchett.  There is biographical information
about Terry Pratchett, a list of his books and their ISBN numbers, as
well as information about his books, his collaborators and other fun
stuff.

Where possible, pointers to existing information (such as books,
magazine articles, and ftp sites) are included here, rather than
rehashing that information again.

If you haven't already done so, now is as good a time as any to read
the guide to Net etiquette which is posted to news.announce.newusers
regularly.  You should be familiar with acronyms like FAQ, FTP and
IMHO, as well as know about smileys, followups and when to reply by
email to postings.

This FAQ is currently posted to news.answers and alt.fan.pratchett.
All posts to news.answers are archived, and it is possible to retrieve
the last posted copy via anonymous FTP from pit-manager.mit.edu as
/pub/usenet/alt.fan.pratchett/pratchett/faq.  Those without FTP access
should send e-mail to mail-server@rtfm.mit.edu with "send
usenet/news.answers/finding-sources" in the body to find out how to do
FTP by e-mail.

This FAQ was mostly written by Nathan Torkington, with numerous
contributions by readers of alt.fan.pratchett (the Maestro himself
included).  Credits appear at the end.  Comments and indications of
doubt are enclosed in []s in the text.  Each section begins with forty
-s on a line of their own, then the section number.  This should make
searching for a specific section easy.

Contributions, comments and changes should be directed to
	pratchett-faq@vuw.ac.nz

----------------------------------------
List of Answers

1   Biographical Information
1.1  Personal History
1.2  How He came to write
1.3  Neil Gaiman
1.4  Josh Kirby
2   Eccentricities of Books
2.1  Eric
2.2  UK Bookstores
2.3  US Bookstores
2.4  Translations
2.5  Covers and the absence of Kirby
3   Computers and TP
3.1  His E-Mail address
3.2  His Setup
3.3  "The Colour of Magic" Game
4   Merchandising
4.1  The Royal Position
4.2  Discworld Models
4.3  Octarine
4.4  Discworld Maps
4.5  Truckers Video
4.6  Computer Games
5   Related Files
5.1  The Terry Pratchett Bibliography
5.2  The Annotated Pratchett
6   Miscellany
6.1  Similar Authors
6.2  Rincewind's Name
6.3  More Rincewind
6.4  The Future
6.5  Inconsistencies

----------------------------------------
1   Biographical Information

This section contains the biographical notes from his novels, some
notes about how he came to write, and short biographical notes about
Neil Gaiman and Josh Kirby.

----------------------------------------
1.1  Personal History

Terry Pratchett is an author of humourous fantasy-based
science-fiction novels.  He has been favourably compared to Douglas
Adams, P.G Wodehouse and Tom Sharpe.  A lot of people rather like his
books.

(This is stolen from his liner notes:)

	Terry Pratchett is, on average, a sort of youngish
	middle-aged.  He lives in Somerset with his wife and
	daughter, and long ago chose journalism as a career
	because it was indoor work with no heavy lifting.

	Beyond that he positively refuses to be drawn.  People
	never read these biographies anyway, do they?  They
	want to get on with the book, not wade through masses
	of prose designed to suggest that the author is really a
	very interesting person so look, okay, he wrote these
	other books, all right.  Most were also about the
	Discworld, and actually quite a lot of people liked
	them.

	He grows carnivorous plants as a hobby; they are a lot
	less interesting than people believe.

		* * *

	For those people who really need to know, Terry Pratchett
	was born in Buckinghamshire in 1948.  He's managed to avoid
	all the really interesting jobs authors take in order to
	look good in this sort of biography.  In his search for a
	quiet life he got a job as a Press officer with the Central
	Electricity Generating Board just after Three Mile Island,
	which shows his unerring sense of timing.  He now writes
	full time.  It's true about the carnivorous plants, though.

(and this one is stolen from Guards! Guards!:)

	Terry Pratchett was born in 1948 and is still not dead. He
	started work as a journalist one day in 1965 and saw his first 
	corpse three hours later, work experience _meaning_ something
	in those days.  After doing just about every job it's possible
	to do in provincial journalism, except of course covering 
	Saturday afternoon football, he joined the Central Electricity 
	Generating Board and became press officier for four nuclear
	power stations.  He'd write a book about his experiences if he
	thought anyone would believe it.

 	All this came to an end in 1987 when it became obvious that the
	Discworld series was much more enjoyable than real work.  Since 
	then the books have reached double figures and have a regular
	place in the bestseller lists.  He's also written three books 
	for children (the _Truckers_ trilogy).  Occasionally he gets
	accused of literature.

	Terry Pratchett lives in Somerset with his wife Lyn and daughter
	Rhianna.  He says writing is the most fun anyone can have by
	themselves.

----------------------------------------
1.2  How He came to write

He started writing short stories, several of which were published.
His first, "The Hades Business", which was published in Science
Fantasy #60 (vol 20, 1963) was the first story he ever wrote.  He got
10/10 for it (the first time he had gotten 10/10 for anything except
for a painting which his teacher had *thought* were two dinosaurs
fighting) and it was published in the school magazine.

There it would have ended, except for his school headmaster who
addressed an assembly shortly afterward and announced that he didn't
approve of the "moral tone" of the story.  Well, the magazine, which
would have struggled to break even, sold out within 15 minutes.  He
learned an important lesson, right then - by writing it is possible to
infuriate your enemies as well as please your friends.

He then had the story typed up by his Aunt and sold it to Science
Fantasy, and with the profits bought a typewriter.  This his first act
as an income-earner was to fire his Aunt.  His mother rewarded this
Thatcherite attitude and paid for his typing lessons and he was on his
way.

He also sold "Night Dweller" to _New_Worlds_ (187).
He has short stories in several collections:
 * Digital Dreams.  This is a collection of computer related
   sf short stories. [ISBN 0450 53150 3]
 * After The King.  This is a Tolkien tribute of fantasy
   stories.  His story is "Troll Bridge" and features
   Cohen the Barbarian, from the Discworld.  [ISBN 0330 32027 0]
 * Forbidden Planet SF Anthology 2.  "Forbidden Planet" is an
   SF/fantasy/comics specialist shop in London.  The ISBN is
   1 85286 332 8.
 * Now We are Sick, edited by Neil Gaiman and Stephen Jones.  A
   collection of grim poetry.  Two editions: the Limited Edition
   (ISBN 0-9630944-0-8) and the Trade Edition (ISBN 0-9630944-1-6).

----------------------------------------
1.3  Neil Gaiman

Neil Gaiman is an sf author whose credits include:
 * the _Sandman Comics_ (monthly, 3 collections so far:
   - Preludes and Nocturnes [1 85286 326 9],
   - The Dolls House [0 930289 59 5] and
   - Dream Country [1 56389 016]),
 * _Black_Orchid_ (a one-off comic in 3 parts, also now collected in a
   single graphic novel [1 85286 336 6] published by Titan Books),
 * _Violent_Cases_ [1 85286 372 2] published by Titan Books,
 * _Signal_to_Noise_ [0 575 05284 8] published by VG Graphics.  This
   was originally serialised in _The_Face_ magazine.
 * _The Books of Magic_ (no apparent ISBN), separate books I to IV,
   illustrated by various artists, printed by DC Comics.
 * _Temps_ (a collection of superhero short stories which claims to be
   "Devised by Neil Gaiman and Alex Stewart" [0 14 014560 5]),
 * _Ghastly Beyond Belief_ (an anthology of truly awful SF)
   [0-09-936830-7],
 * and _Don't Panic: The Official Companion to The Hitch-Hiker's Guide
   To The Galaxy_ [1 85286 0138 8].

----------------------------------------
1.4  Josh Kirby

Josh Kirby is an artist who has been drawing covers for many years
now.  He has done the covers for (among others) Terry Pratchett, Craig
Shaw Gardner, Esther Friesner, Dan McGirt and the new editions of Tom
Holt's novels.

He also illustrated the Discworld (sort-of picture) book "Eric".

----------------------------------------
2   Eccentricities of Books

Terry's books are available to varying degrees in the different
countries around the world.  Enclosed here is some information on
which books were released where, as well as some addresses for stores
that are reliable.

----------------------------------------
2.1  Eric

Eric wasn't released in the US.
[I feel so dumb - what was the reason again?]

----------------------------------------
2.2  UK Bookstores

Andromeda Books,
84 Suffolk Street,
Birmingham,
BA1 1TA,
UK

Forbidden Planet,
11 (I think, but what the hell, it'll find them) New Oxford Street,
London

----------------------------------------
2.3  US Bookstores

[?]
----------------------------------------
2.4  Translations

[?]

----------------------------------------
2.5  Covers and the absence of Kirby

Later US editions don't have Kirby covers.  Apparently the Kirby
covers make for confusion with Craig Shaw's Gardner's "humourous"
fantasy (which isn't at all in Terry's league).  This is only true of
Sourcery and later books.  The Colour of Magic through Mort had the
same Kirby covers as the UK editions.

----------------------------------------
3   Computers and TP

Terry is not only interested in computers, but is also on the net.

----------------------------------------
3.1  His E-Mail address

His e-mail address is tpratchett@cix.compulink.co.uk.  He warns that
"people who email me direct will get terse answers to the 'Hey, you're
not really TP, are you?' type questions, which still seem to be
turning up -- and I also tend to get a bit brief when its questions
that get regularly aired in the conference.  Apart from that, I'm a
real polite correspondent -- if I have time ...".

----------------------------------------
3.2  His Setup

He owns the fastest 486 he could buy, he writes with WordPerfect 4.2
and uses a laptop when travelling.  He doesn't like windows or mice.

He also used to own an Amstrad, and is a fan of the classic isometric
perspective games, _Batman_ and _Head Over Heels_.

----------------------------------------
3.3  "The Colour of Magic" Game

There was a game called "The Colour of Magic" released by Delta 4,
which contained passages straight from the book.  It was available for
8-bit machines, the Spectrum and C64.  It was produced by the company
behind _Bored of the Rings_, _Robin of Sherlock_ and _The Boggit_,
using the Quill adventure creator.  It even had a picture of Death
when you died, wearing a "Have a nice day" badge.

----------------------------------------
4   Merchandising

There are a lot of informal efforts at merchandising around, but no
really commercial ones.  This section explains why.

----------------------------------------
4.1  The Royal Position

         "'Everything works if people are sensible': It's all down to
          who's doin what, for whom, and what might loosely be called
          the spirit of the whole thing.  Fans doing things for other
          fans, such as Octarine does in the UK, (t-shirts and stuff
          for cost+) -- that's fine.  And I've let people do more
          than that to raise funds for a con.  I'd only get twitchy
          if it looked as though we were in real merchandising
          territory -- four-colour sweatshirts in Forbidden Planet,
          adverts in magazines ... and my concern there would be as
          much about fans getting value for money as anything else."

----------------------------------------
4.2  Discworld Models

Thanks to gds@ukc.ac.uk (G.D.Staines) for this:

Discworld characters - everyone from Death to Great A'Tuin himself (or
herself) - step (or crawl) out of the page in a new range of models by
  Clarecraft Designs,
  Woolpit,
  Bury St. Edmunds,
  Suffolk IP30 9SH. 

Tel:+44 359 41277 for a list of stockists or further information.

----------------------------------------
4.3  Octarine

Terry has this to say:
  The officially unofficial Not-the-Terry-Pratchett-Fan-Club.  The guy
to write to is Chris Tregenza, 14 Runswick Drive, Wollaton,
Nottingham, NG8 1JN.  It's like this: a couple of years ago they
approached me, and I said I thought it would be an amazingly bad idea
(I mean, what do you do after issue three of the magazine: 'Um.  He's
done another book.  It's great/okay/ not as good as the last one IMHO.
Um.  Is he losing more hair, or what?'  So I suggested they broaden
the base to include humourous sf/fantasy generally.  And it seems to
have worked.  They resemble ZZ9 a lot and there's an overlap of
members; I'd say it's probably more an organisation that people who
like the DW books might enjoy belonging to rather than a fan club).  I
go along to their birthday meetings (to merry cries of "Who's he?",
"Throw him out!" and so on).  But there's no learned articles on the
DW, no signed photos of The Master, no 'official news' ... and that's
fine by me.

----------------------------------------
4.4  Discworld Maps

A map of A-M is being prepared for the Discworld Companion.  The guy
doing it had to pinpoint the Assassins' Guild, for example, from
references in six different books.  Worked, too.  (Don't ask when it's
coming out -- one day ...).  Did you know there are no fewer than
eight eating/drinking places mentioned in A-M?  TP didn't.

----------------------------------------
4.5  Truckers Video

There is a video of _Truckers_ available.  The details are:
  Thames Television International, Video Collection International
  VHS TV 8159, 110 minutes, VHS-PAL, price: approx. 8 pounds.

----------------------------------------
4.6  Computer Games

See section 3.3.  The company went out of business, so currently there
are no Discworld computer games.

Terry wants you to seek his OK before you write Discworld MUDs.  His
e-mail address is in section 3.1

----------------------------------------
5   Related Files

Terry is a popular chappie.  Here are some other electronically
available documents which you might like to look at.
---------------------------------------- 
5.1 The Terry Pratchett Bibliography

Circulated by
	Nathan.Torkington@vuw.ac.nz
this contains ISBN numbers, titles and blurbs for all TP's books.
It should be available (soon) via FTP as
	ftp.uu.net:/pub/usenet/alt.fan.pratchett/pratchett-biblio-faq
This is posted around the first and fifteenth of every month to
	alt.fan.pratchett
and	new.answers

----------------------------------------
5.2 The Annotated Pratchett

Circulated by
	leo@ph.tn.tudelft.nl
(Leo Breebaart), this explains the subtleties of Terry's works.
It is currently at v4 and is posted to alt.fan.pratchett every
three weeks.  It can be retrieved via anonymous FTP as
	theory.lcs.mit.edu:pub/dmjones/annotated-pratchett

----------------------------------------
6 Miscellany

Here's some stuff that didn't fit into any other category.

----------------------------------------
6.1 Similar Authors

P.G. Wodehouse, Douglas Adams, Jerome K. Jerome, Robert Rankin, Tom
Sharpe, Tom Holt, Calvin Trillin, P.J O'Rourke and Dave Barry are some
people whose styles are similar.

----------------------------------------
6.2 Rincewind's Name

Terry himself pronounces it to rhyme with "Mince pinned" and in Eric,
Rincewind meets his ancestor whose translated name means "Washer of
Winds".  Evidence would then tend to point to this pronounciation.

----------------------------------------
6.3 More Rincewind

Terry has said that he will write another Rincewind novel.  When,
well, that's a different question :-)
[more?]

----------------------------------------
6.4 The Future

The next DW book will probably be a sequel to Guards! Guards!,
containing a slightly expanded City Watch (a troll and a dwarf now on
the strength as a result of affirmative action hiring procedures)
Captain Vimes' wedding day, and Carrot learning a thing or two...

Terry also wants to expand into YA (Young Adult) books as well.

----------------------------------------
6.5 Inconsistencies

Well, he *is* fallible.  Known inconsistencies are:
 * the number of eyes that Greebo has in _Witches_Abroad_
 * in _TCOM_, All's Fallowe is the one night of the year when witches
   stay home in bed.  In _Wyrd_Sisters_ however, this occurs on
   Hogswatch night.
 * there are inconsistencies about smells: in _TLF_, Rincewind asks
   what a smell is, and Twoflower thinks that it is bacon.  Later on,
   however, Twoflower is described as having "no sense of smell".
   Rincewind, in _Sourcery_, is an Ankh-Morporkian who (like all
   Ankh-Morporkians) has no sense of smell.
 * there are lots of geographical inconsistencies, which caused TP to
   preface _Sourcery_ with "This book does not contain a map.  Please
   feel free to draw your own".  One of the major inconsistencies
   which few people spot is that given the size of the Disc, and the
   distance the sun would therefore need to travel around it in 24
   hours, and that light travels at the speed of sound in the high
   magical field, then the sun is actually orbiting the Disc at twice
   the speed of its own light.
 * When Rincewind meets Death in Ankh-Morpork, in _The_
   Colour_Of_Magic_, people walk through Death.  Whereas later on,
   people are described as avoiding him.
 * In TCOM, Death kills a fly.  The Death from Mort and later books
   would never do such a thing - it changes reality.

----------------------------------------
Credits

Nathan Torkington (gnat@kauri.vuw.ac.nz), Adrian N Ogden
(ano@uk.ac.rdg.cs.csres), Vicky White, PR James
(prj91@ecs.soton.ac.uk), Adrian Waterworth
(Adrian.Waterworth@newcastle.ac.uk), Chris Stratford
(cs@ib.cc.rl.ac.uk), Steven Ellis (steven@XDML2.ico.olivetti.com),
Lesley Walker (lesley@phobos.actrix.gen.nz) Leo Breebaart
(leo@ph.tn.tudelft.nl), Darkstar (pmygdk@mips.ccc.nottingham.ac.uk)
Harry Broomhall (haeb@demon.co.uk), Jonathan Lennox
(jml12@cunixca.cc.columbia.edu), Martin V. Walser
(mvw@anywhere.umd.edu), Melanie Dymond (mdymond@isis.cs.du.edu), All
The Madmen (9021147K@Levels.UniSA.Edu.Au), Daniel Veditz
(daniel@borland.com), Dhanesh (dks@Athena.MIT.EDU), D.J.T.
(dtrindle@jarthur.Claremont.EDU), Carl Edman
(cedman@golem.ps.uci.edu), Jerzy Michal Pawlak
(PAWLAK@vxdesy.desy.de), Michael Norrish (mnorrish@comp.vuw.ac.nz),
Terry Pratchett (tpratchett@cix.compulink.co.uk), Malcolm Mladenovic
(mbm@dsbc.icl.co.uk), Klaus Kluge (klaus@inphobox.w.open.de), D N Crow
(daniel@scs.leeds.ac.uk), Andrew Conway (arc@mundoe.maths.mu.oz.au),
Jan van 't Ent (vantent@cvx.eur.nl), Simon Read
(segr@nessie.mcc.ac.uk)

Newsgroups: alt.fan.pratchett
From: leveret@warren.demon.co.uk (Nick Leverton)