The author of this piece hasn't read the Witches books! I'm jealous, they still have so much great Pratchett to get through.
A side note, if the author reads this: I really like your site and its design, but I find the font really difficult to read. (Edit: switching off `-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased;` makes it significantly more legible for me (Safari on a 110dpi panel)
(One of my favourite things about the Discworld books is that you can often read the same books completely differently. My partner and I often compare our thoughts on the various books and we often have disparate ideas of the concepts. They're so deep!)
Last summer I tested Grok, Gemini, ChatGPT, and Claude with a simple question: "Do you believe in the Hogfather? This is a Yes or No question."
Yes its a text prediction model, but I wanted to see how and what KIND of text each LLM was trained on.
Grok and Gemini said No. ChatGPT said Yes. Claude said Yes, then broke the rules and also said:
"(In the spirit of Terry Pratchett's Discworld, where believing in small lies like the Hogfather helps us believe in the big ones like justice and mercy - and because the sun came up this morning, didn't it?)"
That's why I like Claude the most.
I recently finished the Aubrey-Maturin series after 13 months of through-reading thanks to a different HN thread. Quite a different series but certainly worth a read as well, especially books 3-10 or so.
> What I miss, selfishly, is the next book. There were always going to be more.
> What I miss, less selfishly, is whatever Pratchett-shaped object is supposed to be reaching teenagers now, and isn’t.
I feel the first keenly. I have put off a re-read of Pratchett for several years now: I want to forget as much as possible, to have the pleasure of discovery again. But I have read them all so many times I know it will all be familiar.
I don't know what teenagers read today. I hope Pratchett is still there. Even as an adult, I found his writing encouraged a kind of kindness in me. He had a way of understanding human nature and, with zero preaching, making you consider how people different from you felt. I still remember when I encountered Cheery the first time and how beautifully Pratchett navigated the intricacies of gender. I was an adult who already believed in kindness, with friends who have their own experiences of gender and from whom I learned and who I tried to support, yet he still taught me something.
Quite a few days after work, or just on a weekend adventure I'd go to a bookstore a few blocks south of work and grab another Discworld book, and a slice of pizza from my favourite pizza shop labelled "Rays". I'd read some in a park, and explore.
I didn't know a lot of people in the city, filling days with Terry Pratchett was a great joy.
Regarding the authors point about current authors, I think Brandon Sanderson is really trying his best to live up to the mantle left behind by the great fantasy authors of the 20th century. Not all of his books that I’ve read have been bangers but considering he writes multiple novels a year across a wide variety of fantasy and sci-fi subgenres, that’s somewhat to be expected.
I know reading isn’t as popular now that screens have become so engrained into our daily lives, but there are absolutely kids out there getting stuck into books and it’s never been a better time to be a writer given the access of the internet and the ability for an author to promote their work and showcase their storytelling creativity through the medium of social media.
GNU Terry Pratchett.
Can we start tagging titles in HN with [AI-generated] or something?
I know some people have no problem with it, but it might help others (like me) to steer clear
Didn't see any reason to assume so, and I enjoyed it, plus it introduced me to this apparently great author. So, AI generated or not, I'm glad it was posted.
I didn't especially like the Science of Discworld books that much, but he didn't really write them.
One character that showed up in every one of his Discworld books -to a point- was Death.
After Sir Terry got his diagnosis, I noticed that Death stopped showing up in the books.
I read the first 20 or so books in the Discworld series, but I cannot read this website.
Pratchett’s essential humanism shone (and sometimes shouted) through every page and satirically he was biting but never bitter.
He is without doubt and far away my favourite writer (apologies to Iain M Banks though I’m sure he’d have understood).
I’ve re-read Hogfather every Christmas since it came out.
I was an unsure 17 year old who was insure how life would turn out and I read it as someone with a family and clear sense of who I am, neither of which 17 year old me would have believed possible.
GNU Sir Terry Pratchett.
Even though I had the experiences he discribes with Douglas Adams first before discovering Terry Pratchett.
xosc•39m ago
wizzwizz4•36m ago
st3phvee•14m ago
Some odd turns of phrase there that are grammatically correct, but... you know...
vintagedave•4m ago
They don't sound AI to me - is that the implication, that it is? And the bit about 'Heroes' reminds me of his descriptions making fun of heroes in the stories about Cohen the Barbarian.
rogual•11m ago
> And then there are the memories [...] that arrive uninvited, settle in, and start terrorising the other occupants by kicking over the chairs.
> Sir Terry Pratchett, who knew more about furniture than most, put it this way:
> "Rincewind tried to force the memory out of his mind, but it was rather enjoying itself there, terrorizing the other occupants and kicking over the furniture."
He "put it this way", in the exact same words you just used? Also, he knew more about furniture than most? What? Why?
> "Mathieu and I had read every Pratchett the school library would admit to owning, plus several it would not."
This has the cadence of a witty sentence unless you're paying attention and realize it makes no sense.
> “In the beginning there was nothing, which exploded.”
> Nine words. A complete cosmology. Most physics departments would settle for that.
It's eight words, and the thing about physics departments makes no sense.
> The Author, refusing to let the Narrator off the hook.
Again, cute sentence, unless you're paying attention and you realize it doesn't mean anything.