Pratchett tribute
Wednesday, 12th December, 2007
Mort-ified* to hear that Terry Pratchett has the beginnings of Alzheimer’s disease.
Some parts of his Discworld series are so funny that you can’t read them on public transport for fear of cackling uncontrollably and getting taken for a crazy person. (Maybe that’s just me.)
He is taking the Alzheimer’s news with the wise and witty touch you’d expect from him.
“I know it’s a very human thing to say ‘is there anything I can do’, but in this case I would only entertain offers from very high-end experts in brain chemistry.”
He’s sold over 55 million books according to the BBC. That’s amazing. There was a Guardian interview with him once in which he complained mildly about librarians who told him that they were so pleased that so many teenagers liked his books, because they often sparked an interest in reading “real” books. 
Books don’t get much “realler” than Pratchett’s best works.
Personally, I found his straight sci-fi dull, his kids’ books a bit twee, the spin-off books really irritating and the many Discworld fan-products just money-grubbing. (The Science of Discworld annoyed me no end – pop science around a discworld story that you couldn’t even follow because of having to pick it out from the gee-whizzy science stuck in by his collaborators.) I even find the cover illustrations crap, although as soon as I see one it sets off a Pavlovian dog response in me: “Must have that book. NOW.”
The books in the Discworld series can be sublime. The Discworld is like our world but in HDR. The characters are amazing. I have to stop there because I will end up sounding (even more) like the pseud’s guide to English Literature 101
The man is a genius. I hope some seriously high-end experts in brain chemistry get to work on him fast.
* Lame Pratchett pun. Sorry.
