This book is dedicated to the memory of Nigel Williams, a dear friend and antiquarian book dealer who acquired many a Pratchett novel for me
‘The truth is that even big collections of ordinary books distort space, as can readily be proved by anyone who has been around a really old-fashioned second-hand bookshop, one of those that look as though they were designed by M. Escher on a bad day and has more staircases than storeys and those rows of shelves which end in little doors that are surely too small for a full-sized human to enter. The relevant equation is: Knowledge = power = energy = matter = mass; a good bookshop is just a genteel Black Hole that knows how to read.’ Terry Pratchett (Guards! Guards!)
‘A ritual, more compelling than ever man devised, is fighting anchored darkness. A ritual of the blood; of the jumping blood. These… owe nothing to his forbears, but to those feckless hosts, a trillion deep, of the globe’s childhood.’
Mervyn Peake (Gormenghast)
First I would like to acknowledge my dear friend and colleague Steve Moore, with whom I have discussed Pratchett’s work and who was kind enough to read over the chapters of this book to ensure I didn’t beat too far off the Pratchett track and to offer his own dose of wit and wisdom – many thanks for that.
Posthumous thanks to Nigel Williams, who had one of the most fascinating and value-for-money antiquarian bookshops in the whole of the Charing Cross Road area. Nestled in Cecil Court, Nigel acquired over a dozen Pratchett first editions for me, for which I am eternally grateful.
A big thank you to Colin Smythe, Terry Pratchett’s agent, for casting an eye over the finished book and offering informed and detailed comment, especially clarity regarding early proof copies. Thanks also to Nathan for always wanting to ‘acquire’ the odd Discworld title from me, thus making me read them more quickly (although I did have to borrow the odd one from him too)! And thanks to Simon Gosden for finding a few obscurities for me and always being so amiable. Thanks to my dear friend John Collins for keeping me up to date with the latest press cutting. (Next time my mysterious postman should stop for a small beer or glass of wine perhaps?)
I would also like to thank some dear old friends and acquaintances who pop up in this book in a variety of ways: James Herbert, Clive Barker, Stephen Laws, Simon Clarke, Joe Donnelly, Ian Rankin, Iain Banks, Neil Gaiman, Alice Cooper and Christopher Lee. Your influence stays with me, gentlemen, despite the passing years.
I would also like to thank some of the great fantasy writers past, such as JRR Tolkien, CS Lewis, Richard Adams, Robert Browning and the great Charles Dickens, who helped me realise the scope of the genre.
Thanks are due to Anita, Samantha, Nathan, Fern and my father Colin, for putting up with yet another book; Berny for the Terry Nation tip-off; and John Blake and John Wordsworth for allowing me to write about Terry Pratchett. Then there is my Danish friend Michael, who always uses Saturday morning football as the catalyst for varied conversation from Lord Nelson to Terry Pratchett – how diverse can you get? Thanks, too, to other members of the Saturday Morning team, specifically John and Robert.
Thanks to Tony Mulliken and those early breakfast meetings, which, as always, helped immensely.
Finally I would like to thank Terry Pratchett himself for being such a stimulating character to research and write about. His imagination and strength of character have brought so much happiness and hope to many people all over this world, and that is one of the fundamental reasons why I was so interested in writing this book.
Craig Cabell
London, 2011
Table of Contents
Title Page
Dedication
Epigraph
Acknowledgements
Introduction (or what this book is and what this book isn’t)
A Serious Note on the Text (and a bit of a rant)
PART ONE THE ROAD TO DREAMS
Chapter One Early On
Chapter Two What Happened Next
Chapter Three And as if by Magic…
PART TWO A FANTASY WORLD
Chapter Four The Colour of Magic
Chapter Five Tripping the Light Fandango
Chapter Six Mort, Faust and Death
Intermission The Carpet People (again)
Chapter Seven A Vastly Populated World
Chapter Eight Grooving with a Pict
Chapter Nine Challenging the Cliché
Chapter Ten The Dreams and Nightmares of Childhood
Chapter Eleven If Music be the Food of Love
Chapter Twelve The Long Dark Tea Party of the Soul
Chapter Thirteen Writing for Children
Chapter Fourteen Nation
Chapter Fifteen Courtly Orangutans
Chapter Sixteen A Character Called Death
Chapter Seventeen Alzheimer’s Disease
Chapter Eighteen The Dark Red Wings of Misery
Chapter Nineteen A Note About Cats
Annex A Pratchett on Screen
Annex B Pratchett at the Theatre
Annex C Terry Pratchett: Complete UK Bibliography and Collector’s Guide
Annex D The Unseen Library Bibliography
Conclusion And Finally
End Note
Further Reading
Plates
Books by Craig Cabell
About the Author
Copyright
A first edition of the first Nac Mac Feegle novel, inscribed in Pratchett’s inimitable way
(or what this book is and what this book isn’t)
‘… there are some things we shouldn’t forget, and mostly they add up to where we came from and how we got here and the stories we told ourselves on the way.’ Terry Pratchett (Introduction, The Folklore of Discworld)
Strange things happen to you when you read Terry Pratchett’s novels on the train. People bend over to study the cover and say ‘I’ve read that one’, which is really annoying. Even a ticket inspector has said that to me.
Pratchett’s books are instantly recognisable nowadays, mainly for their impressive Josh Kirby dustwrappers. I know this because during a completely different train journey, I was reliably informed by a fellow passenger that somebody else was reading a book by the same author because the cover was ‘bright and colourful and, well, quite similar, so it must be the same writer’.
There are fans of different characters within the Discworld series, from Rincewind and Luggage to Death and Granny Weatherwax, but perhaps more focus has been placed on Pratchett himself in recent years. Since December 2007, when he publicly announced that he was suffering from the early stages