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EspañolTERRY PRATCHETT
'Terence David John Pratchett OBE' (born 28 April 1948) is an English fantasy and science fiction author, best known for his ''Discworld'' series. Other works include the ''Johnny Maxwell Trilogy'' and the ''Bromeliad Trilogy''. He also closely collaborates on adaptations of his books, such as computer games and plays.
Pratchett started to write by the age of 13 and his first work was published commercially at the age of 15.[1] His first novel ''The Carpet People'' was published in 1971. The first ''Discworld'' novel ''The Colour of Magic'' was published in 1983 and since then, he writes two books a year on average.
Pratchett was the UK's best selling author in the 1990s.[2][3] As of February 2007, he had sold approximately 50 million books worldwide[4] and have been translated into 33 languages. He is currently the second most read writer in the UK and seventh most read non-US author in the USA.[5]
Terry Pratchett was named an Officer of the Order of the British Empire in 1998 "for services to literature."[6] His novel ''The Amazing Maurice and his Educated Rodents'' won the 2001 Carnegie Medal for the best book for children.[7] Pratchett and his work are often described as having a cult following.[8][9]
Biography
Terry Pratchett was born in 1948 in Beaconsfield to David and Eileen Pratchett, of Hay-on-Wye. Pratchett passed his eleven plus exam in 1959 and went to High Wycombe Technical High School. He credits his education to the Beaconsfield Public Library[10] and described himself as a "nondescript student."
At the age of 13, Pratchett published his first short story ''The Hades Business'' in the school magazine. He published it commercially at 15. Pratchett earned 5 O-levels and started 3 A-level courses, in Art, English and History. Pratchett's first career choice was journalism and he left school at 17 in 1965 to start working for the ''Bucks Free Press''. However, he finished his A-Level in English and took a proficiency course for journalists.[11]
Career
About 1968,[12] working as a journalist, Pratchett interviewed Peter Bander van Duren, co-director of a small publishing company. During the meeting, Pratchett mentioned he had written a manuscript, ''The Carpet People''.[4] Bander van Duren and his business partner, Colin Smythe, which was also the name of the publishing house, published the book with illustrations from Pratchett in 1971. The book received a few but praising reviews. The book was followed by sci-fi novels ''The Dark Side of the Sun'' and ''Strata'', published in 1976 and 1981, respectively.
After various positions in journalism, in 1983, he became Press Officer for the Central Electricity Generating Board in an area which covered three nuclear power stations. He later joked that he had demonstrated impeccable timing by making this career change so soon after the Three Mile Island nuclear accident in Pennsylvania, USA, and said he would write a book about his experiences, if he thought anyone would believe it.
The first ''Discworld'' novel ''The Colour of Magic'' was published in 1983 by Colin Smythe in hardback and by New English Library in paperback. The publishing rights for paperback were soon taken by Corgi, an imprint of Transworld, which has published Pratchett until today. Pratchett received further popularity after the BBC's Woman's Hour broadcast the novel as a serial in six parts and after publishing ''The Light Fantastic'' in 1986. Subsequently, rights for hardback were taken by a big publishing house Victor Gollancz, which has also published Pratchett until today, and Smythe became Pratchett's agent. Pratchett was the first fantasy author published by Gollancz.
Pratchett gave up his work for the CEGB in 1987 after finishing the fourth ''Discworld'' novel ''Mort'' to fully focus on and make his living through writing. His sales increased quickly and many of his books occupied top places of the best-seller list. According to ''The Times'', Pratchett was the top selling and highest earning UK author in 1996. Some of his books have been published by Doubleday, another Transworld imprint. In the USA, Pratchett is published by HarperCollins.
According to the ''Bookseller's Pocket Yearbook'' from 2005, in 2003 Pratchett's UK sales amounted to 3.4% of the fiction market by hardback sales and 3.8% by value, putting him in 2nd place behind J. K. Rowling (6% and 5.6% respectively), while in the paperback sales list Pratchett came 5th with 1.2% by sales and 1.3% by value (behind James Patterson (1.9% and 1.7%), Alexander McCall Smith, John Grisham and J. R. R. Tolkien).[14] His sales in the UK alone are more than 2.5 million copies a year.
Awards
Pratchett was the British Book Awards Fantasy and Science Fiction Author of the Year for 1994.[15] In 1998 he was appointed an Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) for services to literature. Typically, his own tongue-in-cheek comment was "I suspect the 'services to literature' consisted of refraining from trying to write any."[4] He has been awarded honorary Doctorates of Literature, by the University of Warwick in 1999,[4] the University of Portsmouth in 2001,[4] the University of Bath in 2003[4] and the University of Bristol in 2004.[4] ''The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents'' won the 2001 Carnegie Medal for best children's novel (awarded in 2002). In 2003 Pratchett firmly reinforced his credentials as one of Britain's most loved authors by joining Charles Dickens as the only author with five books in the BBC's Big Read top 100 (four of which were ''Discworld'' novels) and was the author with the most novels in the top 200 (fifteen).[21]
All the Tiffany Aching novels have received a Locus Award for Best Young Adult Book (2004, 2005, 2007).[22]
Personal life
Terry Pratchett married his wife Lyn in 1968 and they moved to Rowberrow in Somerset in 1970. Their daughter Rhianna was born there in 1976. In 1993, the family moved south west of Salisbury in Wiltshire, where they currently live. Rhianna Pratchett is a journalist and "an accidental cat collector";
[4]
she has also written a fantasy novella titled ''Child of Chaos'', distributed with the computer role-playing game Beyond Divinity. She is working on the scripts and storyline for several games, e.g. ''Heavenly Sword'' and ''Overlord''. She is a member of the Writers' Guild of Great Britain.
[4]
Pratchett lists his recreations as "writing, walking, computers, life".
[4]
He is also well known for his penchant for wearing large, black hats, as seen on the inside back covers of most of his books. He wanted to be an astronomer as a child and fulfilled this ambition by building an observatory in his garden.[26] Terry Pratchett is an atheist and a Distinguished Supporter of the British Humanist Association.
[4]
On 31 July 2005, Pratchett criticised media coverage of Harry Potter author J. K. Rowling, commenting that certain members of the media seemed to think that "the continued elevation of J. K. Rowling can only be achieved at the expense of other writers".[4]
However, he did not express any dislike of the Potter books themselves.
Pratchett's interest in orangutans is reflected on one of his most popular fictional characters the Librarian and his work as a trustee for the Orangutan Foundation UK.[29] His activities include visiting Borneo with a Channel 4 film crew to make an episode of "Jungle Quest" in 1995, seeing orangutans in their natural habitat.[30] Following Pratchett's lead, fan events such as the Discworld Conventions have adopted the Orangutan Foundation as their nominated charity.[31]
Writing
Terry Pratchett at Worldcon 2005 in Glasgow, August 2005
Pratchett has written both fantasy and sci-fi literature but focuses almost entirely on fantasy because, according to his own words, "it is easier to bend the universe around the story" in fantasy.[32]
Influences
Terry Pratchett makes no secret of outside influences on his work; they are a major source of humour. He imports numerous characters from popular culture and ancient history[33] but adds an unexpected aspect. These references are fairly consistent. He likes crime novels, which reflects on frequent appearance of the Ankh-Morpork City Watch in the ''Discworld'' series. He was an only child and his characters are often with no siblings because "In fiction, only children are the interesting ones."[34] An example is Susan Sto Helit.
His earliest inspirations were ''The Wind in the Willows'' by Kenneth Grahame, Isaac Asimov and Arthur C. Clarke. His literary influences have been P.G. Wodehouse, Tom Sharpe, Jerome K. Jerome, Larry Niven, Roy Lewis.[35], G. K. Chesterton, and Mark Twain.[36]
Trademarks
Aside from his distinctive writing style, Pratchett is known for the use of footnotes in his books.[37] These footnotes usually involve a comic departure from the narrative or a commentary on the narrative and occur in various numbers.[38]
Another notable feature of Pratchett's style of writing is that most of his books are not subdivided into chapters. Pratchett stated that he does this because "life doesn't happen in chapters," nor do most films, and Homer did not write in chapters. He claims chapters to be unnecessary in books written for adults.[39] However, there have been exceptions; ''Going Postal'' was divided into chapters, as are the books about Tiffany Aching.
Characters' and place names and titles in Pratchett's books often contain puns, allusions and culture references.[40][41] Some characters are parody of well known real or fictional characters. For example, the Pratchett's character Cohen the Barbarian is a parody of Conan the Barbarian and Leonard of Quirm is a parody of Leonardo da Vinci.
The use of capitalized dialogue (without speech marks) to indicate one of the series' most permanent characters, Death, communicating directly to an individual's mind without speech, is also a trademark of his writing.
Technology
Pratchett started to use computers for writing as soon as they became available. His first computer was the Sinclair ZX81, but the first computer he used for writing was the Amstrad 464, later replaced by the PC. His experiments with computer upgrades reflected on Hex, the only fictional computer in the ''Discworld'' series.[42] When he travels, he always takes a portable computer with him to write.
He is a computer game player and some of his works were adapted as games in close collaboration with him. Pratchett prefers a game that is "intelligent and has some depth" and used Half-Life 2 as an example.[43]
Pratchett was one of the first authors to use the Internet to communicate with fans and has been a contributor to the Usenet newsgroup alt.fan.pratchett since 1992.[44]
Bibliography
Discworld
A shelf full of Terry Pratchett's Discworld Novels.
Now containing over forty books, the ''Discworld'' series is a humorous and often satirical fantasy work that uses the Discworld as an allegory for our every day life. The name "Discworld" comes from the fact that the world is described as being shaped like a large disc resting on the backs of four giant elephants supported by the enormous turtle Great A'Tuin, swimming its way through space. Major topics of parody have included many science fiction and fantasy characters, ideas and tropes, Ingmar Bergman films, Australia, film making, newspaper publishing, rock and roll music, religion, philosophy, Egyptian history, trade unions, university politics, and monarchy.
''See the ''Discworld'' article for a list of Discworld novels.''
Related works
Together with Ian Stewart and Jack Cohen, Pratchett wrote ''The Science of Discworld'' (1999), '' (2002) and '' (2005). All of these have chapters that alternate between fiction and non-fiction, with the fictional chapters being set within the universe of the Discworld, as its characters observe and experiment on a universe not unlike ours. In 1999 Terry Pratchett made both Cohen and Stewart "Honorary Wizards of the Unseen University" at the same ceremony at which the University of Warwick gave Terry Pratchett an honorary degree.[4]
===The Bromeliad Trilogy
★ 1988 ''Truckers''
★ 1990 ''Diggers''
★ 1990 ''Wings''
The Johnny Maxwell Trilogy===★ 1992 ''Only You Can Save Mankind''
★ 1993 ''Johnny and the Dead''
★ 1996 ''Johnny and the Bomb''
Other works
★ 1971 ''The Carpet People''
★ 1976 ''The Dark Side of the Sun''
★ 1981 ''Strata''
★ 1989 ''The Unadulterated Cat'' (with Gray Jolliffe)
★ 1990 ''Good Omens'' (with Neil Gaiman)
★ 2008 ''Nation''
Books containing contributions from Pratchett
★ ''After the King'' edited by Martin H. Greenberg (1992) contains "Troll Bridge", a story featuring Cohen the Barbarian (also published in ''Knights of Madness'' and ''The Mammoth Book of Comic Fantasy'', see below).
★ ''The Wizards of Odd'' edited by Peter Haining (1996) includes a ''Discworld'' short story called "Theatre of Cruelty"
★ ''The Flying Sorcerers'' edited by Peter Haining (1997) is the "sequel" to ''The Wizards of Odd'' and starts off with a Pratchett story called "Turntables of the Night", featuring Death.
★ ''Knights of Madness'', again edited by Peter Haining (1998) is the "sequel" to ''The Flying Sorcerers'' and contains the ''Discworld'' short story "Troll Bridge" (also published in ''The Mammoth Book of Comic Fantasy'', see below).
★ ''Legends'', edited by Robert Silverberg contains a ''Discworld'' short story called "The Sea and Little Fishes".
★ ''Meditations on Middle-Earth'' (2002)
★ ''The Leaky Establishment'' written by David Langford and recently re-issued for which Pratchett provided a foreword
★ ''The Mammoth Book of Comic Fantasy'' edited by Mike Ashley (2001) contains "Troll Bridge", a story featuring Cohen the Barbarian.
★ ''Once More
★
★ With Footnotes'' edited by Priscilla Olson and Sheila M. Perry (2004) is "an assortment of short stories, articles, introductions, and ephemera" by Pratchett which "have appeared in books, magazines, newspapers, anthologies, and program books, many of which are now hard to find."[33]
★ ''Now We Are Sick'' written by Neil Gaiman and Stephen Jones includes the poem called "The Secret Book of the Dead".
★ ''The Writers' and Artists' Yearbook 2007'' includes an article by Pratchett about the process of writing fantasy.
Adaptations
Theatre
''Johnny and the Dead'' and 14 ''Discworld'' novels have been adapted as plays by Stephen Briggs and published in book form.[47] In addition, ''Lords & Ladies'' has been adapted for the stage by Irana Brown, and ''Pyramids'' was adapted for the stage by Suzi Holyoake in 1999 and had a week-long theatre run in the UK.[48]
Television
Terry Pratchett in his cameo role as a toymaker in ''Terry Pratchett's Hogfather''
''Johnny and the Dead'' was made into a TV serial for Children's ITV on ITV in 1995. In January 2006 BBC aired a three-part adaptation of ''Johnny and the Bomb''.
A two part feature length version of ''Hogfather'' starring David Jason and the voice of Ian Richardson was first aired before Christmas on 17 and 18 December 2006 on Sky One and, in high-definition, on Sky One HD. Pratchett was opposed to live action films about ''Discworld'' before because of his negative experience with Hollywood film makers.[49] He changed his opinion when he saw that the director Vadim Jean and producer Rod Brown were very enthusiastic and cooperative.[50] "The Colour of Magic"/"The Light Fantastic" (both books are being merged into one as they follow on) is currently under production also for Sky One.[51][52]
''Truckers'' was adapted as a stop-animation series for Thames Television by Cosgrove Hall Films. ''Wyrd Sisters'' and ''Soul Music'' were adapted as animated series by Cosgrove Hall Films for Channel 4 in 1996. An illustrated screenplay for ''Wyrd Sisters'' was published in 1998 and for ''Soul Music'' in 1997.
Films
Terry Pratchett's novel ''The Wee Free Men'' is set to be turned into a film by Sam Raimi; currently the film is expected to be released in 2008.[53]
Radio
''The Colour of Magic'', ''Guards! Guards!'', ''Wyrd Sisters'', ''Mort'' and ''Small Gods'' have been dramatised as serials, and ''The Amazing Maurice and his Educated Rodents'' has been heard as a 90-minute play,[54] all for BBC Radio 4.
Comic books
''The Colour of Magic'', ''The Light Fantastic'', ''Mort'', and ''Guards! Guards!'' have been adapted into graphic novels.
Role-playing games
''GURPS Discworld'' (Steve Jackson Games, 1998) and ''GURPS Discworld Also'' (Steve Jackson Games, 2001) are role-playing source books which were written by Terry Pratchett and Phil Masters, which also offer insights into the workings of the Discworld and the power of narrative. The first of these two books was re-released in September 2002 under the name of ''The Discworld Roleplaying Game'' with art by Paul Kidby.
PC and Console games
The ''Discworld'' universe has also been used as a basis for a number of ''Discworld'' video games on a range of formats, such as the Sega Saturn, the Sony Playstation, the Philips CD-i and the 3DO, as well as DOS- and Windows-based PCs. The most notable games are:
★ ''The Colour of Magic'', the first game based on the series, and so far the only one directly adapted from a ''Discworld'' novel. It was released in 1986 for the Sinclair ZX Spectrum & Commodore 64.
★ ''Discworld'', an animated "point-and-click" adventure game made by Teeny Weeny Games and Perfect 10 Productions in 1995.
★ ''Discworld II: Missing, Presumed...!?'', a sequel to ''Discworld'' developed by Perfect Entertainment in 1996. It was subtitled "''Mortality Bytes!''" in North America.
★ ''Discworld Noir'' is the first 3D game based on the ''Discworld'' series, and is both an example and parody of the ''film noir'' genre. The game was created by Perfect Entertainment and published by GT Interactive for both the PC and PlayStation in 1999. It was released only in Europe.
Works about Pratchett
A collection of essays about his writings is compiled in the book ''Terry Pratchett: Guilty of Literature'', edited by Andrew M. Butler, Edward James and Farah Mendlesohn, published by Science Fiction Foundation in 2000. A second expanded edition was published by Old Earth Books in 2004. Andrew M. Butler also wrote the ''Pocket Essentials Guide to Terry Pratchett'' published in 2001. ''Writers Uncovered: Terry Pratchett'' is a biography for young readers by Vic Parker published by Heinemann Library in 2006.
References
1. Terry Pratchett
2. Life on planet Pratchett
3. Terry Pratchett in conversation
4.
5. Terry Pratchett: Biography
6. Meet Terry
7. The Carnegie Medal - Recent Winners
8. Pratchett casts a bitter spell on rivals
9. Terry Pratchett
10. ''Who's Who'' entry
11. About Terry
12. Delos 9: Interview - One of the most loved fantasy writers of this generation
★ every one of his books a best seller...Delos couldn't let him slip!
13.
14. Discworld Monthly - Issue 100: August 2005 - New from Colin Smythe (Terry's agent)
15. Previous Winners & Shortlists - The Fantasy and Science Fiction Author of the Year
16.
17.
18.
19.
20.
21. The Big Read
22. Locus Awards Winners By Year
23.
24.
25.
26. Talking with Terry Pratchett
27.
28.
29. Accomplishments and Achievements - 2. Media and Publicity
30. Short Stories: Terry Pratchett's Jungle Quest
31. Discworld Convention 2004
32. Transcript of IRC interview with Terry Pratchett at the World Fantasy Convention by James Webley
33.
34. Parenting: Only need not mean lonely
35. Terry Pratchett (1948-)
36. Interview de Terry Pratchett (en Anglais) [Interview with Terry Pratchett (in English)]
37. Fictional Footnotes and Indexes - Fiction with Footnotes
38. Statistics - Footnotes
39. Terry Pratchett
40. White Knowledge and the Cauldron of Story: The Use of Allusion in Terry Pratchett's Discworld
41. The Literary Evolution of Terry Pratchett
42. PalmPilot. Private interview carried out by Mike Richardson.
43. PC Interviews - Terry Pratchett
44. alt.fan.pratchett
45.
46.
47. Discworld Plays
48. Discworld Monthly - Issue 19
49. The New Discworld Companion, , Terry, Pratchett, Gollancz, ,
50. Terry Pratchett: Interview
51. Del's spells as David lands role
52. Curriculum Vitae - Television, Film, Vodeo & Computer
53. Pratchett book set for big screen
54. 7 Drama
External links
★ Terry Pratchett's official site at HarperCollins (US publisher)
★ Terry Pratchett's official site at Transworld (UK, EU and Canada publisher)
★ Terry Pratchett at Colin Smythe (his agent)
★ May 2, 2007 Live webchat transcript on Douglas Adams Continuum
★ The L-Space Web: A Terry Pratchett / Discworld Web Site
★ Discworld Monthly: free monthly newsletter about Terry Pratchett and his works
★
★ Discworld & Pratchett Wiki
★
★ Terry Pratchett Quotes archive: a searchable database of quotes from Terry Pratchett's novels
★ Bookclub: BBC’s James Naughtie and a group of readers talk to Terry Pratchett about his book Mort ('audio')
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