Terry Pratchett

Interviewed by Steven H Silver

For those who don't know, and past sales indicate that many Americans do not, Terry Pratchett is the author of a series of extremely funny books about a place called the Discworld, which is very much like our own world, except that it is flat, carried on the backs of four elephants, who in turn are carried on the back of a giant turtle, and magic works.

Although Pratchett is considered the best-selling living author in Britain and is extremely popular in Australia, his American readers seem to be something of a cult following. With the release of The Fifth Elephant, Pratchett is undertaking a lengthy tour of the US in an attempt to introduce more people to his humorous, but very cogent, view of life.

When I had the opportunity to speak to Pratchett in Chicago, he had literally just arrived from a science fiction convention in Austin, Texas.

Bad weather delayed his flight so I had arrived at his hotel slightly before he did. Once he had checked in, we sat in the bar and talked over a couple of Goose Island beers. Despite a long day of travel and bad weather, Pratchett was amiable and had even taken the time to call the hotel from the airport to make sure I knew about his delay (the hotel, however, failed to pass along the message).

While Chicago is a world class city with many attractions, Pratchett noted that there was not a lot of "free time" on a book tour, but he had seen "Lower Wacker Expressway," noting that "the Blues Brothers drive down it in, well, The Blues Brothers." The rest of his time would be spent in interviews, book signings and an online chat. Mostly, of course, he was in Chicago to promote the 24th Discworld novel.

Even writing "darker" books, the Discworld novels are humorous novels.

Pratchett includes many jokes which are based on specific cultural references which may not be familiar to all his readers. "It really worries people. Not everything in the books is a pun or a joke. In fact, there are very few puns. It looks as if there might be more." Much of the humour is derived by lampooning common cultural references.

Because Pratchett is writing in Britain for a largely British crowd, this means, of course that much of the humour is dependent on a knowledge of British culture; however, as Pratchett is quick to point out, much of British (and indeed world) culture is based on America.

"I had to keep explaining to people at the convention in Texas that we know about a lot of things in America. The average Brit knows infinitely more about the minutiae of American culture than the average American knows about British culture -- simply because Western culture is now largely American culture, so you just learn about it, pick it up from the movies and the television."

Nevertheless, sometimes Pratchett's material is specific to a region. A case in point is the novel The Last Continent, which is set on the continent of XXXX, the Discworld equivalent to Australia. The Last Continent is filled with enough Australian cultural references that it caused a reader to ask on the alt.fan.pratchett newsgroup if the Americans and British readers missed many of the jokes.

"The references you missed you didn't notice. Or, you thought that was just funny. For instance, there is a whole series where Rincewind is riding around on a little horse that is so sure-footed that it can run up slightly on the roofs of caves. There's a whole sequence there that is based on the Australian poem 'The Man From Snowy River.' I don't know if there is an American poem that has quite the same place in the nation's heart. That's one that all Australians will know and if you don't then it's all just Rincewind running around, having fun. And there are other things, like the XXXX ministers are put into prison as soon as they are elected and Rincewind asks why and they say it saves time.

"Australian politicians are notorious for getting put in prison. But the point is it probably is still funny even if you don't know some of the background."

As the series progressed, Pratchett moved away from parodying fantasy novels and began to satirize daily existence in the real world.

"I suppose if the truth were known, I found how sterile the opportunities of the classic fantasy universe were. Because the classic fantasy universe doesn't change very much. A lot of humour has to do with familiarity and there is little about the classic fantasy universe that is real to us. Take Lord of the Rings. Big battle. 'Hurray, we have a king again. Let's all go home.' What happens next day? What happens is all these armies are scattered around the place. There's thousands, millions of defeated warriors a long way from home. The elves will have got their green cards and buggered off to the west. The landscape has taken a severe beating. Who's going to take out the trash? What happens tomorrow? And you never hear that sort of thing. And afterwards, then the politicking starts. We know that history doesn't stop when a war is completed. It was kind of these things which led me to turn my attention to what we might call non-traditional fantasy targets, but in the classic fantasy universe."

Pratchett draws parallels between what he has done with the Discworld and the traditional English pantomime, a traditional form of entertainment dating back more than a century.

"Don't run away with the idea that I knew what I was doing. This is post facto reasoning.

"You have no tradition of pantomime here. And sometimes I wish we had no tradition of pantomime in England, but, pantomime kept going year-in, year-out. And the classic story-line of the pantomime tends to stay the same. Everything else becomes modern. The references are modern.

"Often television stars and other well-known people will be part of the cast and the pantomime and aspects of the script will be built around them. So the pantomime keeps going because it has these modern references all the time. I suppose Discworld can be the same sort of thing."

In any event, the Discworld has changed over time as Pratchett honed his skills as a writer. In early books, Pratchett referred to several characters only by their title. The Archchancellor of Unseen University or the Patrician of Ankh-Morpork. As time progressed, the characters acquired names and more definable personalities.

"In those days, the Archchancellor would change at least once per book. I'm a little uncertain about [whether the Patrician changed or has always been Lord Vetinari]. Sourcery actually marked the boundary line. The books before that were 'Old Discworld'; the books after that were 'New Discworld." They are the same place, but written by a better writer.

"Because the early ones were written in the fantasy tradition. You populate, apart from your heroes, with rogues, beggars, vagabonds, lords, whores... you don't think of them as characters. But I find it much more fun to bring them forward as characters."

Discworld has spawned a large number of auxiliary products, not least of which are a series of four wall maps depicting the Disc was a whole and three regions associated with the Disc. At one time, Pratchett declared that the Disc and Ankh-Morpork (two of the mapped regions) were unmappable.

"The reason I said it was unmappable was in those [other, traditional] fantasy books, the map was clearly drawn before the event. What we did was, after twelve, thirteen, fifteen books, then we mapped it. But the point is we mapped what was in the books. In other words, the landscape was created, then the landscape was mapped. We didn't map and then, as it were, create the landscape based on the map. And indeed, the very act of mapping gave me fresh ideas and locations and the nature of the city of Ankh-Morpork. Even the Lancre map, the third map, Paul [Kidby] would be drawing a few things in the corners as it were that interested him, and I thought, 'That's good. I know how that bit's going to fit in the story.'"

With four maps published, it is reasonable to expect more to come.

While Pratchett indicates that there will be more, he does not want his fans to start bothering the local bookseller just yet. "It's going to take me a few years to define some more undiscovered countries." The Discworld has been featured in two animated series which aired on British television based on the novels Wyrd Sisters and Soul Music.

Several computer games have also been based on the Discworld. With all those hands working on the world he created, Pratchett does not seem to have qualms about having other people play with his world.

"The animations and the games people have drawn things their way, but they've generally stuck to the map. But that's because they've got limitations of the medium. That's how you have to cartoon it. I'm still in charge of the novels. I can't be in charge of the animation because I'm not an animator, and that's a very vital thing. The spin-off thing is not really big. It only seems big because it is unusual for something which is largely a book-based thing to have this amount of spin-off. By comparison to media spin-offs, its minor."

The movies and plays which are based on Discworld serve to increase his readership where they are available, but in the US, Pratchett needs to increase his readership among people who have never heard of him and do not consider themselves science fiction fans. However, the book industry has changed with a small mid-list and stores tending to pull books from the shelves faster, before they have a chance to find their target audience.

"Then and now, it is only possible to start off and begin to build up a readership and build up a readership and build up a readership and then you get noticed. It is much harder to do that in the book industry in the US. Because unless you are an instant bestseller, the books are not going to stay on the shelves long enough to build up a readership except in a small number of specialty shops.

"I think now, with the recent Avon-Harper merger, there is a sense that people have gotten behind it and the books from now on will be published simultaneously in the US and the UK, until something goes wrong."

Although the UK has turned out several authors who write quality humour, Pratchett was quick to point out that the British don't corner the market on humour.

"You have guys like Donald Westlake, who I believe is an American national treasure. You should re-carve Mt. Rushmore with his head. And yet he seems to be neglected. He sells okay, people have heard of him, but he's not like a bestseller, as such. And I think he's very very funny. So is Carl Hiassen in a dark sort of way.

"I like thrillers. I like modern, dark, humorous is the wrong word, wry might be a better word. Elmore Leonard, Donald Westlake, Joseph Wambaugh, Carl Hiassen. There is an occasional lightness of touch that may well resemble humour. I read all kinds of stuff. I'm quite omnivorous when it comes to reading."

One of the first characters Pratchett created for the series is the Wizard apprentice Rincewind, who has been appearing in Discworld novels since The Colour of Magic first appeared in 1983. Pratchett is on-record as not being overly fond of Rincewind because there is little character development involved with him.

"He's not my favourite character because it's hard to give him any depth. Rincewind is just the eternal 'reasonable' character. Therefore, he's a coward. He doesn't see the point in being kicked about. And he's surrounded by idiots and fools who often do want to get killed. And it occurs to one that he's probably decent under all. But, from my point of view, someone like Vimes or Granny Weatherwax is a far more interesting character. We can see far more going on inside their heads. They're more screwed up."

Most of the books set on the Discworld are set in one of four subseries (the City Watch, the Witches, Death and Rincewind). However, there are a couple of books (notably Small Gods and Moving Pictures) which stand on their own. Pratchett indicates that he will begin writing more books which do not rely as heavily on his known characters.

"As a new departure, starting with the next book, which is The Truth, my main characters are all new characters, but some of the characters who, in the past, have been main characters, are now small characters. If you are doing a journalism novel, a newspaper novel, the police are always going to be involved because that's how a newspaper works. So Vimes and company are in there; we know them because we've seen them before, but the main characters don't and the view my hero, my main protagonist, has of Vimes is different from the one we have because we've seen inside his head. That's refreshing. Seen from the point of view of someone who is something of a libertarian, Vimes does not always act in the best of ways, because he sees things like a policeman does. There may be a couple of books there where all the major roles are filled by people you've never met before. If in that book they go to Ankh-Morpork, we know that's the Patrician over there. We know that's Dibbler selling sausages. We know the wizards in the University, all of whom they may or may not meet. If it is necessary to meet someone in that position, that's who they will meet, if you follow me. I want to bring fresh characters into the series."

When working on new novels in the series, Pratchett finds that he does not necessarily need to refer to the older books to find characters and places which are appropriate.

"I have a pretty good reckoning system in my head. I find going back and reading The Discworld Companion is actually more useful. In both editions of the Companion, I've written a lot of new stuff. Some of it almost amounts to notes for future books, so I go through that to jog my memory. Stephen [Briggs] wrote no new material [for the Companion]. What he did was act like a super indexer and put together for me everything I had said about individual people, drawing, at times, on as many as six books. Everything that was new was written by me. That's generally the case on most of our projects.

"Stephen, as it were, builds the scaffolding and I build the house. He winces about it sometimes because he'll do something which I'll entirely re-write, but the point is that unless he had done it to start with, I wouldn't have known what to do. And it works as a system."

Stephen Briggs became involved with Discworld by turning the novel Wyrd Sisters into a play. He has since co-written books with Pratchett, worked on the Discworld maps, and turned more of the novels into plays.

"I'm not really involved in the plays. The ones that [Stephen] does, I've gone to see all of his. And a number of others. But I don't get involved in the writing of those because Stephen knows more about producing and directing a play than I do. When it comes to the actual writing of the novels and stuff like that, I can always pull rank because I know how to do those things because I've done them for so long. But, I've never acted or put a play together, so I have to bow to him."

Another theatrical project possibly on the drawing boards is the metamorphosis of the novel Good Omens, which Pratchett wrote with Neil Gaiman, into a film. There has been talk of this project for several years.

"We know Terry Gilliam likes it, because we met him in the early 90s and discussed it with him, and he was very keen on it. We know that he's been signed up by the [Peter and Marc] Samuelsons as director. But the fact that Gilliam has signed up for the film does not, in and of itself, mean that the film is ever going to get made.

"Both Neil and I are very, very pleased because we think a bad Gilliam film of Good Omens would be better than somebody else's good film. Mort is on-and-off as a live project. Curiously enough, we have no English movie interest whatsoever. All the interest is coming from Germany and the USA. I think that's because the English film industry is made up of a bunch of wankers. When the Brits are allowed to make movies by themselves, it either has to be very gritty stuff about jobless steelworkers or airy fairy stuff with Hugh Grant in it. The idea of doing a fantasy would not occur to them, whereas the Germans quite like that sort of thing. I leave out Paul Bamborough Production, who has got the rights and has stood by them through thick and thin and definitely wants to see Mort made as Mort to a script that's recognizable as Mort. He's thought this all along. The British movie industry as a whole seems quite puzzled about this sort of thing. 'What, you mean there's no part for Scottish drugtakers in it?' 'Couldn't Mort be a steelworker and take all his clothes off?' 'There's no part for Hugh Grant? Well, good Heavens, can you make movies like that?'"

Although the majority of Pratchett's novels are marketed to an adult audience, they can be enjoyed by younger readers as well. When I commented that I would feel comfortable handing one of Pratchett's novels to my ten-year-old nephew...

"Have you actually paid attention to what Nanny Ogg is saying, sometimes? It's an old English tradition. You use a kind of code and, if you can crack the code, then you know about it anyway. And in one of the books, Nanny says something like, 'The recipe for a happy life is stand before your god, bow before your king and kneel before your husband.' But the boy understands everything she says there, then he already knows. So it doesn't really matter."

Pratchett has also written a half-dozen novels marketed to children, all of which can be read and enjoyed by adults. Pratchett does not see anything strange about this, believing that good children's fiction is a subset of good fiction which can be enjoyed by anyone.

"I would say that good children's fiction has always been read by adults. I'm slightly puzzled by the success of J.K. Rowling, only because I think people like Diana Wynne Jones's [novels] so much better. It's like the roulette wheel: it spins and a number comes up and you're in the right place at the right time. I have two more [children's books] planned. They are set in Discworld. Both of them are set in a fantasy universe, that is to say that the familiar rules of fantasy operate. Which may as well, therefore, be Discworld, although the major happenings of Discworld are happening somewhere else. One of them is taking place in a small town that's never been mentioned, but the feel is the same as Discworld, and the other will have a cast of thousands of characters, all of whom will be the Nac mac Feegle, who already appeared in Carpe Jugulum, who I really love... It could be in any fantasy universe, but it will be fun to do it as Discworld, but market it as a children's book. I will say that, even now, when I have the OBE for services to literature, mostly because I've always claimed never to write it, some newspapers persist in calling me a children's writer because they're still stuck in the groove of 'fantasy,' because children read fantasy. So if I write some deliberately children's Discworld books, it is going to muddy the waters even more."

A few years ago, Pratchett was made a member of the Order of the British Empire. Since knighthood and honours are foreign to most American's way of thinking, Pratchett has found himself downplaying the title several times on his North American tour. "I have to explain this to Americans. At best, its kind of a knighthood light. I was astonished. That kind of thing does not happen to genre authors." In fact, Pratchett feels that some of his best writing can be found in the children's Johnny Maxwell trilogy, the middle volume of which he claims is his strongest novel.

"Only You Can Save Mankind, Johnny and the Dead and Johnny and the Bomb were published in America by the good old Science Fiction Book Club because American children's publishers said they were too intelligent for American kids. But SFBC is doing so well with all my stuff they thought they would publish them directly. To write any more of them, they would have to present themselves. If you force me, I could sit down and come up with the idea for another Johnny Maxwell book, but generally I wait until an idea forms. I did Only You Can Save Mankind and I didn't think I would write any more about the kid. Then I did Johnny and the Dead in remembrance of my grandfather, who fought all the way through the First World War. That was also a children's video series in the UK. It was all done of a shoestring, so they were very happy with my help. And it actually did very well because they had some very good actors who gave up time to do it. Brian Blessed played William Stickers. There's a point where death hauls up a boat in the canal to take him away and William Stickers says, 'How much do you get paid for that? It's not enough.' The actors were so wrapped up, they cooked up an extra twist to the scene which will bring tears to your eyes. It may have been Brian Blessed doing it. As the boat is being punted away, he stands up and sings the last verse of "The Internationale." Then it fades to black. It happened because one of the actors said to Brian, 'My father was exactly like this character and that's how he would have liked to go out.' They put a lot into it and it was a fun thing."

"The strongest novel is undoubtedly Johnny and the Dead. Tom Bowler was being cremated and William is sitting outside the crematorium and he sees the ghost of young Tom Bowler come out and up the path come the remainder of the battalion which all died in France. After they did that, they got members of the old guards in their uniforms and, as they did it, they faded to sepia, so it would look exactly like the old pictures. And he just falls in and it was done beautiful. Of all the things I've done, I'm proudest of Johnny and the Dead. The whole philosophy of Terry Pratchett is in Johnny and the Dead."

Pratchett does not feel limited by the Discworld because it affords opportunities to write about the entire world.

"In the last few books and the next few books, you'll notice changes. In The Fifth Elephant, a semaphore system has been set up, which is clearly having the same galvanizing effect that the telegraph or the internet have had. That's kind of changing things as well because it became a plot twist in The Fifth Elephant. I'm allowing a bit of technological innovation while still keeping it firmly a fantasy universe. The new technology isn't magic. People have taken to semaphore because they can make money using it, but only Lord Vetinari has realized exactly what it really means."

Pratchett is pushing the boundaries of Discworld. In addition to writing novels which make less frequent use of common characters, he is revisiting and expanding an idea he did with an earlier book. In the first edition of Eric, the Discworld's version of the legend of Faust, the book included several illustrations. Pratchett, and one of his frequent collaborators are working on a new project which, while it makes extensive use of illustrations, is not a graphic novel.

"Along with Paul Kidby, who isn't Josh Kirby -- it so happens that both guys have five-letter names beginning with 'k' and ending in 'by' -- I'm doing a lavishly illustrated Discworld book, to the extent that the illustrations will be part of the story. Eric was a novelette with twelve illustrations. This will be a slightly longer text but illustrated on every page. Sometimes with double-page spreads. I chose the plot to give them as many opportunities for illustrations as possible. And the guy's an absolute genius. There were things I wanted to do and Cohen the Barbarian has a major role. Having done everything it's possible to do, he's found it was not enough and he's actually challenging the very gods themselves on their own turf. The book will be called The Last Hero."

One of the things which upsets Pratchett is the conclusion that just because the people he writes about are not flesh and blood, killing them for the sake of the story is something to be done on a whim. He tries to kill characters only when necessary and tries to make their deaths and murders as poignant as possible.

"In Men at Arms, I didn't know Cuddy was going to be the one who died. When it happened, I realized a character you liked had to die. Its not like The A-Team with machine guns and no-one gets killed. I had to say guns kill, that's what happens. That's the thing about guns; that's what they're there for."

At the same time, death is a reality in both Discworld and the real world (although in Discworld, Death makes frequent appearances, at least once in each novel). Pratchett, therefore is open about the fact that characters do die.

"A major character, that is, one who has had a major part in one or more books, is going to die within the next year or two and you don't have to be a genius to work out who it is likely to be, especially if you remember that dying on the Discworld is not necessarily the end of your involvement. Indeed, as we've seen in Johnny and the Dead, dying may be at the heart of the first day of the rest of your life. In Feet of Clay, Vimes's interest is in the attempted poisoning of the Patrician.

"[This] suddenly redoubles when he realizes that quite innocent people, a baby and an old lady, have also been killed. He realizes that if the Patrician is killed, it is, on paper, a bad thing, but it's too easy in fantasy to kill off hundreds of people. In reality, these people are just as real as the main characters. You have to think about what it actually means to kill one person before you blithely have some battle with thousands dead. There's a character later on in Feet of Clay, one of the bad guys, upon hearing that the old lady and the baby were accidentally killed asked, 'Were they important?' And Carrot says 'Of course they were.'"

Pratchett's fans are legion and they are very vocal about their favourite novels and characters. This causes slight problems since everyone tells Pratchett which characters to focus on, but the suggestions are usually contradictory. Pratchett has taken to ignoring the advice.

"The problem is that I get requests from people who want more of the witches or don't like the witches and want more guards. You'll get what you're given, but everyone is cheering for the party of choice.

"I get a lot of e-mail on the subject [of combining series]. But the fact is that if you like pickles and you like chocolate, but chocolate pickles may not be a good idea. If you put them all together, its sort of like a super-hero league where Batman can only have adventures because Superman happens to be out of town. What a lot of people want is to see a face-off between Granny and the Patrician. It may happen, but I don't want to do it just to have the fun of doing it. I almost had Vimes and Lady Sybil meeting Verence and Magrat in The Fifth Elephant, but it got edited out because I was doing it as 'series glue' rather than because it was necessary for the book."

Although Pratchett writes his novels relatively quickly, he does take the time to put a lot of thought into what he includes, not just to make sure that the books are funny, but to make sure they have something to say about the society in which we live.

"I know what I put in; what you get out is between you and your God. You might get out more than I put in."

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