The Rise of Terry Pratchett

So, apparently my creative muse likes to come out at night. This is at least the third time I’ve come home from work, you know, at 2:30 AM, and gotten out my laptop and started writing.

Generally, I just tear through books. Not literally of course, but I just race reading through novels, whole series even. Not so with what I’m currently in.

Strata is by Terry Pratchett. I love reading Terry Pratchett. I think he’s clever, and insightful, and he does a lot of things in his books that I just love. But I can’t get into this book. I wonder if it’s just that I sit down to read it at bad times, but then I think of the other times when I just fell asleep reading. Part of that is certainly explained by my whacked circadian rhythms—see also it’s nearly 3:00 AM as I’m writing this. But I think part of it is the book.

Fans of Terry Pratchett—and if you haven’t heard of him trust me he’s got legions—probably know him primarily from his Discworld novels. Strata predates the Discworld novels, though you can tell the ideas that will eventually become Discworld are there. It’s interesting to see in the author bio that before Terry Pratchett established himself as a top-notch fantasy author he was considered a rising science fiction author. Of course this is not unheard of. George R.R. Martin, author of the A Song of Ice and Fire series also began his career in science fiction before turning to fantasy. Rick Riordan was an award winning mystery writer before he became a bestselling YA fantasy author. But Pratchett’s history was interesting to me because this was entirely new to me.

Many times reading one of Pratchett’s books I’ve seen a particular quote comparing him to Douglas Adams. I’d quote it here, but I can’t seem to find it. What I can find seems to vindicate my opinion that Pratchett is better though J. I’ve always felt that this comparison did a disservice to both authors though. Until now. Now I can finally see it.

The interesting thing about the Discworld series is that it is as far as I know the only series where other readers in recommending it will tell you not to start on the first novel. Just don’t. It’s a great series to read but The Color of Magic is not the place to start. I’d go so far to say don’t start with the second book, The Light Fantastic either. Part of the reason is that to me, both of those books feel dated. They read like they were written in the 80s, which they probably were. But most of the reason is that the feel of Discworld hasn’t been fleshed out yet. It really doesn’t matter which book you start with though. While Discworld is definitely a series, each book is a complete stand-alone novel, with the possible exception of the Tiffany Aching series which I think rely on each other more so than the others. Yeah, that’s right, there’s little mini-series’ within the main series. There’s multiple books following characters like Rincewind the cowardly Wizzard, Sam Vimes of the Ankh-Mopork City Watch, and Granny Weatherwax the Witch of Lancre. There are probably others I’m missing, plus others with character’s you might not see again—though many characters get cameo appearances elsewhere. Wow, this has become a rave about how good Discworld, and by extension Terry Pratchett, is.

The one concern I have with his writing is that some of his older stuff does feel dated. Now I don’t know how valid of a concern this is. I seriously doubt anyone ever picked up Romeo and Juliet, Gulliver’s Travels, or even something relatively more recent like The Picture of Dorian Grey and was ever in doubt that this was an old book. But I can read The Hobbit and that still seems fresh and new to me, published some 85 years ago. And Discworld’s humor depends on being fresh as much as funny. If it reads old it’s not as funny, and it makes me wonder if the book will stand the test of time. Now, I think this improved around 86 or 87, which I think is when he made the jump to writing full-time judging by his bibliography. I think one of the bios in a book from around that time mentioned that he was losing money by going to work or something like that. Make no mistake, timeless or not the man is a bestseller and will be until he can’t function anymore. His production has slowed down the past few years since his diagnosis of early-onset Alzheimers, which means instead of publishing two books a year he’s down to just one. Can I just mention that the two years of my mission were bad to you if you were one of my favorite living authors? Not only Pratchett’s aforementioned diagnosis, but Robert Jordan died as well.

Getting back to Strata, the book, published in 1981, reads like it’s from the 70s. Talk about feeling dated. And maybe that’s the problem too. It just feels old. But I also get the feeling the Pratchett hadn’t quite mastered his craft yet. He hadn’t captured the humor or the feel that would characterize his writing yet.

The short version of the story is: I’m struggling enough with this book to make non-fiction look good.