Normally, the
proliferation of narcissistic grief that proliferates over the
internet makes me die a little more inside. It was epitomised not so
long ago when Leonard Nimoy died, and after commenting on somebody's
sincere epitaph to him as Dr Spock that Spock was definitely a Mr,
not the child raising expert Dr Benjamin Spock, the writer of the
epitaph admitted that they didn't even like Star Trek. Which made me
wonder why on earth you would write a sincere RIP message to somebody
who you do not know, and whose body of work you do not even admire.
Unless the ballad of Bilbo Baggins really did mean that much to him.
I am sure in this case that his RIP came from the best of intentions
and a good place. However, the proliferation of RIP posts about every
vaguely famous person who dies makes one's social media feeds
incredibly tiresome whenever somebody dies.
On the other hand,
Terry Pratchett was incredibly important to me, and as I read all the
poignant little discworld quotes on my facebook feed last night, I
will admit to shedding a few tears. Which seems crazy, since I
possibly only met Terry once, and I am still not sure if even that is
true. But having spent the last twenty years reading every book he
wrote at least twice, and many more times over in most cases, I kind
of felt I knew him. The only other time I have felt a little teary
over a famous person's death was Douglas Adams 14 years ago, which
probably tells you a lot about where my priorities lie. So, apologies
for the preamble, there now follows a heartfelt tribute to the man
whose writing certainly changed my life, and possibly even saved it a
couple of times.
To backtrack to
about 1991, I was walking through Barnstaple high street with a
friend from school, we met a man with a big hat and a beard who my
friend clearly knew. The man gave my friend a copy of his new book,
signed of course, we were introduced, and I shook his hand. I thought
no more about my friend's Dad's mate Terry for another 5 years or so
until I read a book called Witches Abroad and recognised the cover.
In the interests of accuracy, it must be stated that this story may
be entirely untrue and created by my overactive imagination, thus I
am not stating the friend's name in case he is reading this and
shatters my illusions. I may not have ever met Terry Pratchett, but
in my hazy happy memories, I did, and I am happy that way. I did
definitely meet a friend of my friend's father, who did give him a
book, but he could have been anyone really I'd imagine.
However, five or so
years later, I was not (for reasons I am not going to go into thanks)
in a terribly good place mentally speaking. But while round at a
friend's house, I was introduced to a playstation game called
Discworld, in which the jokes and characters were utterly entrancing
and hysterically funny. Now I am not a fan of computer games, so when
I was told that they were actually based on a series of books, I went
in search of them. I found a copy of Soul Music in the second hand
record shop I spent most of my time in, and read it in an afternoon.
Somewhere in my teens I had stopped reading so much for fun, and had
become a little faux-earnest and mostly just read poetry and classic
literature. This meant I did not read anything like as much as I had
when I was a kid and utterly obsessed with Douglas Adams, and Doctor
Who.
I went to the
library in search of reading material, as that was where all my happy
memories of reading came from. I had, in my very formative years,
borrowed every single Doctor Who novelisation, Wind in the willows
spin off and god knows what other strange books to read until I got
the coveted Gold book track badge, and beyond. Sadly, the local
library only managed to turn up 3 discworld books, including the
aforementioned Witches Abroad, and my (admittedly completely
scrambled at the time) brain made the connection with the chap I met
in Barnstaple high street five years previously.
This led to the
situation in which I find myself now, where my house is mostly made
of shelves to keep all the books I have had to buy because of library
disappointment. It might not be that between the late 80s and the mid
90s libraries went so far downhill as to make them worse than they
really are. It is just possible that as an adult I went in looking
for specific books, whereas as a child I had gone in just looking for
something to read. Also, the librarian of the specific library I am
speaking of might be reading this, and she is terribly good, as is
her library, and would have ordered any book in I wanted, I was just
too impatient to wait for them to come in. Which is ironic
considering that I now have to buy most books via the internet, which
ensures a lengthy waiting period (or did until my wonderful wife got
me a kindle, thank you honey). Also, I live nowhere near a library
anymore, so I have had to stop trying to find a way into L-Space.
I then went on a
reading frenzy for a couple of years, buying up the entire Discworld
series until I had finally read all the existing titles. Which was a
sad day, as now I had to wait for Terry to write more before I could
read anymore (I have spent the last 6 or 7 years in a similarly
annoyed situation with George R R Martin, although given the state of
Dance with Dragons, I might abandon the song of ice and fire series
now). And so, ever since the fifth elephant, I have awaited the
release of a new Discworld book like a 6 year old awaits their
seventh birthday. I am tearing up a little now with the realisation
that at most I will only ever experience this again once more. That's
how much these books have meant to me. In between new releases I
reread each and every title, in order, which is how come I have read
a lot of them about 7 times now, and some still only once, life is
more busy in your thirties than your late teens unfortunately, and
there are a lot of other books out there to be read as well. One's
priorities do change with age sadly.
I still maintain
that if I had not had my spirits constantly lifted by Terry's
endlessly inventive and amusing prose, then I may never have pulled
myself back together enough to be a fully functioning member of
society today. This is probably a huge exaggeration, but I maintain
that it is true. It also turned out that Discworld is a gateway drug
to hardcore fantasy, it led me to Tolkien, and the Lord of the Rings,
which I fully admit I had tried and been bored to tears by at the age
of 9. Along with Dune, and a bunch of other proper, worthy sci-fi and
fantasy novels, which were not as good as Doctor Who novelisations to
my pre-teen brain. I have since rinsed my way through the lot of
them, and then applied them to Discworld, and got a lot more of the
jokes than I would have done otherwise (a bit like kids who laugh at
Family Guy and the Simpsons without understanding any of the pop
culture references in them, and then see them again after watching
the Star Wars trilogy).
Equally, my
interest in writing had foundered at this point. I had previously
attempted to write a huge epic of the type that only an endlessly
nerdy and righteous eighteen year old can. It was to be about the
second coming of Christ, only he would come back as a disabled girl,
and be scorned and shunned by the church, and shit. Somewhere I still
have the outline and first two chapters, though I should probably
burn them in case somebody reads it. Luckily, Pratchett reminded me
that you can actually chuck gags in and write things that make you
laugh, and I immediately began writing a laugh a minute adventure in
which the four horsemen of the apocalypse are replaced by five biker
lobsters, who accidentally turn off the gravity. It was hopelessly
derivative, and was also abandoned when it became apparent that I had
no attention span for plot in my late teens and early twenties. Also,
that writing with a pen and paper, and then typing it up on a
typewriter is very hard. Particularly if, like me, you cannot read
your own handwriting. Writing got abandoned again until I found a
computer a few years later. But it is thanks to Terry Pratchett that
I realised I could be any good at it, and make cheap jokes wherever
possible.
It is with great
sadness that I come to terms with the fact that I will never again be
pulled into a new adventure on the streets of Ankh Morpork, or the
Valleys of Lancre. I will never know how Young Sam Vimes grows up, or
if Magrat ever really gets the hang of being a Queen. I have, this
last week, been reading the Science of Discworld part 4. If you
haven't read any of this series, I strongly recommend it, it is not
like those “science of” books that pretend everything is real in
the fiction. In it, a couple of scientists explain proper science in
a way that non-scientists can understand, against the backdrop of a
silly story about wizards. It just occurred to me this morning that
there won't be a part 5 now, and I will have to start reading Jack
Cohen and Ian Stewart's proper science books now, and hoping they
still put gags in them.
By the way, if
anybody is thinking of taking up the mantle, and writing new
Discworld books without Terry, please don't, it will not work. We
should have learned this from Brian Herbert's attempts at Dune, any
James Bond books that aren't by Ian Fleming, etc. etc. Brandon
Sanderson only got away with finishing the Wheel of Time by having
all Robert Jordan's notes (and in his defence, he probably managed it
in half the pages it would have taken Jordan, since Jordan seemed
unable to start a book in the series without introducing 5 new
characters and 2 new sub plots. If you're reading this Mr Sanderson,
please have a go at the rest of New Spring, that had promise). Nobody
else has quite the same way with words, or such an ability to hold up
a wonky mirror to Roundworld and show us up for what we are. The
analagous subtext of the Discworld may have become less subtle over
the course of the series, but it never failed to make me laugh, and
occasionally realise the ridiculousness of the real world by using a
dwarf and a troll, and I don't think anybody else could pull that
off, and more importantly, I don't want them to try, I will leave the
denizens of my favourite fictional universe to stay as they are.
Although I am sure CMOT Dibbler would love to be able to sell a few
more books, genuine Terry, found in the back of his desk, honest guv,
only a fiver, I'm cutting my own throat here....
The english
language sadly has not words enough to express my infinite sadness
that my inspiration, my favourite author (although I am sure Terry
himself would tell me that if he is still my favourite author at 37
years old, there is probably something wrong with me, he would be
right, but it was once very much the truth) and person I may have
actually met once is now gone forever, however much happier he
probably is for not having to deal with the embuggerance of his mind
leaving him. I thank him for restoring mine to me twenty years ago,
offer him a banana, and simply say 'ook'.