f13.net

Via Slashdot http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/12/14/0113224&from=rss
 (http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/12/14/0113224&from=rss)

Links to the announcements:
BBC: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/7141458.stm (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/7141458.stm)
Original announcement: http://www.paulkidby.com/news/index.html (http://www.paulkidby.com/news/index.html)


I know there are a few other Discworld fans here, so I figured I'd post this.

Fuck.

I've not read any Discworld stuff, but Good Omens, the book he wrote with Neil Gaiman, was one of the funniest fucking pieces of literature I've ever read.

Fuck.

 :cry:

I had been wondering why his usual frenetic publication pace had slacked off the last couple of years.   :ye_gods:

Never read any of his stuff, but very few people deserve Alzheimer's. Best wishes for him and his family.

Damn, thats really sad  :cry:

Well, at least he has a few things going for him -- fairly early detection, potloads of money (yes, money DOES help. It can't buy a cure, but it can fucking well buy you a lot other than that) -- and according to my wife, the fact that he's a life-long writer.

I can't recall the study she was so recently up to her ears in (it was a study on an order of nuns, whose convent rules were such that each kept a daily journal for her entire life. Which the convent kept. Those collected journals are an unbelievable treasure trove to researchers in a dozen fields), but it dealt with an order of nuns whose oldest members were startlingly resistant (resistant, not immune. They tended to resist it longer and more effectively than was normal, but they were by no means immune) to pretty much all forms of dementia. Some of it was undoubtably due to diet, exercise, and the like -- but some of it seems to trace back to simply the act of writing, which seems to convey a certain amount of brain adaptability even in the elderly.

It'll catch Terry sooner or later, but here's hoping his rewards for such talent help hold it at bay as much as possible until there's a cure.

Pratchett is awesome.  Discworld is some funny stuff.

That's quite sad, he seems like a really great person, I hope it's extremely slow and doesn't have an actual chance to affect him.  I hear they've made a few advancements with Alzheimer's so who knows.

I only started on Discworld this year and liked it so much I went through all thirty or so of the books already, got the latest one in hardback because they are just worth it.  The first books are very good but once he gets to Guards! Guards! everything just locks into place.

I didn't care much when Robert Jordan bought the farm - the way he wrote, it seemed to me he was in it for the money.  Pratchett, on the other hand, is a genuine tragedy.  His books are usually both funny and surprisingly insightful.  This guy's the real thing.

Personally I'd say Mort was the first really good book where he started to hit his stride and then from Wyrd Sisters on he really gets going.  But yeah, Guards!  Guards! was stepped it another gear too.  Have yet to get the latest one (that's what Christmas is for!) but glad to see that he's announced at least two more.  

Good ol' Terry.

Mort/Wyrd Sisters is about where he stopped doing parody and starting creating a fantasy world. Small Gods and Reaper Man is where he moved past creating a fantasy world and started making it a thoughtful one. :)

Sad news.


I can confirm it's awesomeness. And it manages to be surprisingly topical given that it was written before the banking crisis.





"I ATEN'T DEAD"  shurely?


For people who haven't read Discworld and want to try, as others have said you should look at Mort, Guards! Guards! or Small Gods.

This is a shame.  I've been reading Discworld for years, and getting a new book every Christmas from my sister has become something of a tradition for us.  Here's hoping he's as resistant as the diary keeping nuns.

I'll throw my support behind Guards! Guards! as well.  Every Vimes book has been gold.

I'll throw my hat in the ring.  I loved Good Omens.

Sad news.  Discworld and his other books are excellent.

However, I take it none of you have met this bloke in person or watched his interviews ?  He's, er, not the nicest chap in the world....

That may well be true, but I still enjoy his books. Being nice is a prerequisite I have for my friends and people I hang out with. For faceless authors being good and funny suffices.

Err, what? I have spoken to fans who sat at the same table as he has when he's been to Australia, and I've never heard of this. Links/Youtube?

I hope he writes the stories from when he was the Public Relations officer at the Nuke plant some day.

And when he's long gone, I wonder what they'll call the movie based on him.

Indeed.  Hence the seperate lines/paragraph.

Yes, I've met him a couple of times at signings and once at another event.  He was very civil and courteous.  I've listened to/watched a lot of his interviews as well.  My general impression is that he doesn't suffer fools gladly and if he's asked a stupid question in interviews, he'll generally treat it as such.  I've heard interviews where's sounded like the most genial, lovely bloke in the world and others where he's sounded like an absolute arsehole.  The only difference has been in the quality of the interviewer.

I have, too, which is why I haven't said anything.  hehe.  I used to see him at least once a year at company BBQ and chat to him on the phone now and then.  He sure didn't like American, women or  anything else very much.  Suffice to say, I enjoyed his books much more than him.  Anyway, unless he goes completely brain numb, I don't see how a bit of dementia can hurt his style of writings, right?   I have to say, he WAS nice enough not to force Discworld MUD to shut down, which I liked working on very much for years. 

PS his big stupid hat caught me right in my eye when he bent over once.  It was red and sore for days. He didn't even say sorry!  I forgive him now, though.

Mort was my favourite book of his.  I stopped reading after Interesting Times, though.  Too many.  I'm not a big series person, I think.

I put it to you that this is a negative trait if you also combine it with a general belief that everyone else is a fool.

 :-)

Hmph, I only assumed he was a good person based on his books and characters, he seems to extol virtues and punish the bad.  I have no idea what he's like in real life and by the sounds of things I might just choose to remain ignorant on this one so that it doesn't detract from any future books...

The literary world is full of arrogant fucks.  In fact, some of my favourite writers are the arrogant fucks that other arrogant fucks admire. 

The trick is not letting everybody know that they are idiots compared to you. I guess if you have enough money you can stop doing that. Now that I think about it, if I ever win millions I would man those customer support phones one last day...  :-)

The literary world is notorious for legendary fucks. Pick any genre, and you can name a handful of arrogant fucks who probably deserve a swift kick to the nuts. :)

In the sci-fi/fantasy world, Pratchett's not even near the top. For one, he seems fond of his fans. :)

So, what you're saying is, I have a chance in literature? ;)

It's true.  I think Harlan Ellison is at the top of my arrogant fucks I've had the displeasure of meeting list.  Terry doesn't even come close to that level.  I've met a lot of arrogant fuck musicians, but they don't even compare to the level of dickiness writers are capable of... it's one of the reasons they're fun to hang out with sometimes.  Especially when they fight amongst themselves.  Then they're especially fun to watch.

Irrespective of what he's like in real life, I've got to kudos to Pratchett for his comments about J.K. Rowling.  After she said "I didn't realise I was writing a fantasy book", he said "I would have thought that the wizards, witches, trolls, unicorns, hidden worlds... would have given her a clue?"

Harlan Ellison is very vitriolic from the writers strike interviews I've seen recently with him.  Very funny but from a distance only.

Neil Gaiman, on the other hand, does come across as a genuinely nice guy. 

The various kickings he's given to Rowling are examples of my point :  Totally unneccesary bitchiness for jealousy's sake.  Your example is not the only one he's unleashed.

And I don't even LIKE Rowling...

oooo... Ironwoodl's postcount is at 7777.  He needs to find a casino quick!

Or, you know, get a life....

Ah, but that is always an option.

As I was reading through the series over the summer at one point the first page of the books start bragging about how Pratchett is Britain's bestselling living author, then that line is quietly dropped a dozen or so books later (presumably after the Potter series).  I always wondered how he felt about that, I guess he didn't take it in stride?

Well fuck.  That is sad.  There are so many second rate writers out there getting in the way, sad this had to happen to someone genuinely inventive and witty.

Well, he does mention in Art of Discworld how the series got started with Rincewind and the UU, but in an act of "amazing prescience" he changed gears because he saw no future in a series about a college of magic.  And his more recent books (the ones about that girl training to be a witch) have definitely had a more Harry Potter-ish vibe to me.  But I've heard a lot of authors sound off at Rowling, so I don't know if this is really some kind of personal grudge with her for stealing his crown or whatever, or if it's just him echoing the general sentiment, or what.

The Tiffany Aching books have nothing in common with Harry Potter, except that it's teenage fantasy. Not tone, style, substance, plot, anything.

I've read both authors, and I'm not ragging on Rowlings here -- other than being teen/older child fantasy, the books couldn't be more different.

Also, frankly, Wee Free Men is a damn good book to recommend to any child looking for more fantasy.

I imagine it was more like my problem with Rowling, mainly that she sucks up all the goddamn press coverage on books, leaving no PR for anyone else, then bitches because someone makes a semi-spoiler yet positive review about her book that 99.9% of all other authors in the world would be orgasmic to receive.

Fuck, she gets more media coverage when she says one of her characters is fucking gay than Pratchett has ever received in his life. File that shit under "101 Reasons Life Isn't Fucking Fair."

I wonder how Terry Pratchett feels about an injection into his spinal column (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/7179060.stm). It's a little light on details, but the patient experienced a three standard deviation improvement on cognitative tests over seven weeks -- doubling his cognative assesment.

We're talking about a man who couldn't locate himself (couldn't name date, time, year, current city, etc) to being able to properly and correctly orient himself. Mind you, he was still scoring a 14/30 on the Montreal test, but that beat the hell out of 7/30.

This is just a single case study (the drug had shown some promise) on a potential treatment -- not a cure -- and so they went ahead and picked a good candidate. If it works -- even marginally -- on other candidates, then if nothing else they'll have established a potential pathway for treatment

In a choice between forgetting my own name and taking a shot to the spine, I'll take the shot to the spine (with appropriate painkillers I hope).

No idea. I don't recall getting any for my lumbar puncture, but I was more than a bit out of it at the time. For one, all I remember about that was it cleared up the NASTY headache I had. Supposedly, though, it hurts like a bitch -- I remember a vague popping sensation, but no pain. He did have to poke around a bit to get the right spot....

I think this shot's higher up.

Apparently, drilling into my skull and injecting novacaine could help my ears.

But no Doctor over here will touch it and I'm not sure I'd do it anyway....

Yeah, I think there's always that diminishing returns point for anything medical. When it comes to actually being able to THINK, I'm willing to suffer a lot to keep that ability.

But other stuff? My kneecaps have a nasty habit of just popping free and wandering up my thigh. I wear knee braces whenever I exercise, it's only happened a few times, but my doctor assures me it's a congenital problem. And a correctable one. All they have to do is, basically, just move where my femur meets my fibia (tibia? The big bone of the bottom half of the leg) over about a quarter of an inch. On both legs.

Of course, that requires opening my knees up all the way, removing the kneecap, sawing off a quarter inch of bone, moving it to the other side, screwing it back on, and then me spending six months relearning to walk. I imagine recovery would not be pleasant. My doctor has ALSO advised me just to wear the knee braces (just spandex with a foam shape to catch the kneecap should it wander) whenever I exercise and if I still have trouble we'll reevaluate.

I wear the knee braces. Some fixes aren't worth it.

Surprisingly, a shoot to the spine itself doesn't hurt at all. they don't even do local anaesthetization.

The catch is that they have to balance amount of spine fluid correctly - if they take or add too much you're up for weeks of hardcore pain.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/7560713.stm

Interview with Pratchett about his Alzheimer's.


Must suck.

Must.  Now I feel guilty for disliking him for so many years. 

More info on the drug they injected him with. (http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/druginfo/medmaster/a602013.html)

I didn't even know that they were using the drug in this manner.  Alzheimer's is one of those diseases that is so awful, that it's worth going to extremes to maintain cognative stability.  I hate to see anyone fall to this disease almost more than any. 

My father was diagnosed with it not long ago.  It's hard to even go see him. 

My grandmother suffered from senile dementia. Not sure if it was Alzheimer's related or not but she spent the last 17 years of her life so not with it that it stopped being in any way funny. She frequently thought my brother was my father and I was one of my uncles (if it weren't for the ocean separating him and my mother that might have caused issues). Much more than that she also spent a lot of her time either waiting for my grandfather to come home or wanting to go home herself (being in the house she had lived in since she was about 19). The fact that my dad and a few of my uncles spent most of her wake and funeral joking and laughing I attribute more to having lost her years before then any especially black sense of humour.

If you start worrying about everyone who gets afflicted with a disease they can't control, you'll flip your lid. It really didn't make his writing any better. It's just, ya know, sad. But you're still allowed to dislike his writing.

L2R!

My bad, I didn't read the posts from... LAST YEAR. Rather just the ones from today

When you're as old as I feel, last year seems like just yesterday. It's not your fault that you were born too late.

Lawn. Exit. Post haste?

Why would I expend the effort in telling those little fuckers to vacate my lawn when I spent such time and effort concealing landmines there?

I feel old, too, especially today.  I had a corticosteroid injection inside my thumb today.  INSIDE MY THUMB!  It was unnatural.  I'll probably never hitchhike again.  I can not lose my thumbs or I can not prove I've evolved.  Terry Pratchett might be going loopy but at least he has his thumbs! 

Still, I look at my dad and I know this is very sad.  He hasn't forgot who I am but he doesn't know where he is and keeps thinking he's done something wrong.  Sometimes he thinks he's going to jail.  It breaks my heart.

 :ye_gods:

I just started reading his Discworld books not 6 months ago and I rarely remember myself laughing or smiling as much when watching a film than I do reading this gems.

Funny thing is, when I picked up the first book, I did it because something made me think he was the guy who wrote the Hitchhiker's Guide....  :oh_i_see: