The Talented Terry Pratchett
Jamie Says:
The trouble with having an open mind, of course, is that people will insist on coming along and trying to put things in it. – Terry Pratchett
Terry Pratchett has been a constant source of amusement for millions of people for almost thirty years. For myself he has been a font of imagination and strangeness for over a decade, even if I did approach it from a rather odd angle. So when Marianne asks me to write a blog about why I love his work it’s kind of an important moment.
During the mid 1990’s I had made a rather serious move from one Australian state to another due to family issues. While looking for a new house almost everything we owned was in storage, all except for the family computer.
It was around this time that the first Discworld computer game was launched on the market, and since my family was desperate for ways to distract a curious child they bought me this strange game that had some of the first, and finest in my opinion, voice acting ever used in a video game. The combination of strange humour, deranged logic and unusual characters sunk a hook into my brain that would later prove to control a rather large part of my life. And this was from a game that was loosely based on the Discworld novels. 
It was only really when I got to high school that I really developed a relationship with Pratchett’s work.
My English teacher had trusted me with her private library, which was better stocked than the school’s when it came to the more mature speculative fiction books, within which held every Discworld book that had been released up to that point. Needless to say I devoured these books in rapid succession, reading three or four every week until the well ran dry. Nowadays I can afford to buy my own supply.
Openly proclaiming an admiration for Pratchett’s novels usually elicits one of two responses: Either people will admit a similar appreciation or a strong distaste for it. From those of the latter group I have talked to about their feelings it seems that there is a shared opinion that, since the Discworld books fit more into a parody of fantasy role than fantasy itself, they find it hard to appreciate. Some people really do think that irony means “sort of like iron.”
To say that Pratchett has attracted a cult following is rather understating things, with millions buying and reading his books, conventions dedicated to his world happening every year, not to mention the three computer games and multiple mini-series that have appeared on-screen in the last few years.
Unfortunately, in 2007 Terry announced that he was suffering from early-onset Alzheimer’s disease, a brain related
disease that is eventually fatal, therefore any newly released book is accompanied by a sense of sadness.
Terry now writes with the help of his assistant and voice recognition software through which he will continue to bring humour and creative insanity to the world.
