(I’m annoyed now, somehow, pressing one button accidentaly on my keyboard managed to erase a whole post. now I have to type it all again ugh! here goes…)
I have recently been reading ‘Good Omens’ by TP and some other guy. I must say it’s been brilliant. It seems much better than the 1.4 Discworld books I have read so far. Maybe because he has more freedom of expression when writing for adults, or maybe it’s the other guy’s creativity. I don’t know, but it’s good stuff.
So I am now hoping that TP has done lots of non-Discworld, books for adults…
Who the hell ever said Discworld novels were children’s books? Most kids probably wouldn’t get 80% of the humor in them. Why do you think Good Omens is “more adult” than, say, Small Gods, when both are discussing the same subject matter and making essentially the same points? Which Discworld book did you read, and what made you think it was a childrens novel? If you’ve read so few of his novels, why did you name yourself after the protagonist of Thief of Time?
AFAIK, Pratchett has only written three “kids” books: Faust/Eric, The Last Hero, and the forthcoming The Amazing Maurice and his Educated Rodents, which are kids books in that they have more pictures than words in their original release. And I might be wrong about Eric. I read it as an unillustrated paperback, and only noticed it was different from the other Discworld novels in that it was half the length and not as densely plotted.
Anyway, Pratchett’s non-Discworld novels are:
Good Omens
Strata
The Dark Side of the Sun
Truckers
Diggers
Wings
Only You Can Save Mankind
Johnny and the Dead
Johnny and the Bomb
The Carpet People
The Unadulterated Cat
I think The Carpet People might be children’s fiction, and you could argue that the Johnny books are YA, but most of them are about as adult as Good Omens or the Discworld books.
Incidentally, that “some other guy” is comix icon Neil Gaiman, author of the acclaimed Sandman comic books. It’s hard to see his influence in Good Omens, as the tone is pure Pratchett and they both have such a similar mindset behind their writing (although Gaiman is usually a good deal darker) that it’s difficult to tell what ideas came from Gaiman and what ideas came from Pratchett. Right now, I’m reading Gaiman’s novel, American Gods, which is a fantastic work. I’d read his first novel, Neverwhere, before, which suffered in that it felt like I was reading the dialogue balloons for a comic with no pictures in it. He’s greatly matured as an author since then. If you liked the ideas behind Good Omens, I heartily recommend American Gods.
Sorry If I touched a nerve, I just read somewhere that he was technicaly a kids writer, that he started off that way and most of his adult readers are people who started reading him as kids. I am not making that judgement myself. my judgement of the ones Ive read so far are that they are for teenagers.
I don’t want this to come across as an attack, but if the Discworld books strike you as being for teens, then either 1) you haven’t read enpough of them or 2) because you went into them with the assumption that they were for teens, you haven’t been looking for depth and hence have missed the incredible genius that is Terry Pratchett. I would go on and read some more with the expectation that there are layers and layers to be discovered–you may be suprised.
Now then, if thiis thread is going to attract a bunch of Neil Gaiman fans, I have a question: my own personal favorite British author, Diana Wynne Jones, dedicated a book to Neil Gaiman. Does anyone know anything about why? I have this delicious little mental picture of Pratchett, Gaiman, and Jones all sitting around a table somewhere eating something very British and having conversations so witty and brilliant that they knock my socks off.
Some other guy? SOME OTHER GUY?! Lor’ A’mighty, get thee to a comic store, ignore the strange looks you get, and buy a Sandman book! Any of them! If you don’t want to invest in a whole trade paperback, I heartily recommend issue 50, Ramadan.
Anyway, I really don’t understand why you think that Pterry’s books are for teens. I’ll grant you that there are few dirty words (Though Mr. Tulip from The Truth says “----ing” a lot), little violence, and the sex happens offscreen, but the ideas he talks about are about as sophisticated as anything you’ll find in, say, Robert Penn Warren. Part of the genius of Discworld is that there is something for everyone, I suppose. The Rincewind books would appeal to the younger set, the guards books to those who like their detectives hard-boiled, the Granny books to… Well, just about everyone, along with the Death books.
Weeeeell…
No, the books are not intended for children/teens, except his latest: The Amazing Maurice and his educated Rodents. It specifically states that this is his first DW novell for younger readers. Something I find Amazing, since it’s much darker than most of what he’s written. It lacks the references to off screen sex, though.
But many of his pre - 1990 books are about young people coming of age, so I can see why some might get that idea. My guess is that Pterry picked this as an ongoing them, since his readers would be able to recognise this time in life, be they 19 or 59.
There are certain things that publishers decide about whether the primary market is “teen” or not. They’re the ones who have to give the all-important direction to bookstores where to put a book on the shelves. Guess wrong, and a sellable book will fail.
Things that make a novel a candidate for teen are probably: teenage major characters, pictures, limited vocabulary, limited length, limited sex, violence, drugs.
One of the problems with being labeled as a teen author, unless you’re quite famous, is that even when you write a book that’s absolutely intended for adults, adults won’t recognize your name on the spine in the non-teen sections. No recognition = no sale.
I wouldn’t say Pratchett’s DW books are particularly for teens. But they’re certain accessible by teens.
Considering how many adults say so much of Pratchett’s humor goes over their heads or requires several rereadings to get all the jokes, labeling him as a YA or teen writer would be a major miscategorization. About like saying Patricia Highsmith is similar to the Hardy Boys series.
Lord Vetinari, Sam Vimes, Angua, Granny Weatherwax, Susan Sto-Lat (Death), or even 71-Hour Ahmed hardly seem like characters for “kiddie” or even teen books.
Truckers, Diggers, and Wings (“The Bromeliad Trilogy”) are also YA novels. I believe Only You Can Save Mankind is as well.
The Discworld novels certainly are not YA fiction, although I am sure many people do discover them as teens (I did). But most of the Pratchett fans I know or know of are in their twenties and up.
shit! lost a whole post again! (this time I forgot that my first post was sat in the clipboard when I did paste again)
Well, what got me thinking was laughing so much when [in Good Omens] Aziraphale said ‘Oh Fuck’ for the first time in 4000 years. and then thinking I probably wouldn’t see that kind of humour in the discworld books.
I acknowledge now that TP is not a kids/teens writer now. My excuse is that article/thing I saw which implied he was.
Goodness some of you certainly are touchy! I opened this thread to get more info about him, since it was Dopers who first brought him to my attention and I’ve been anxious to give him a try! I have one book waiting for me at the library now and have really been looking forward to starting. Now I’m all perplexed as to why you’d come down so hard on people who are interesting in learning more about a favorite author of yours!
Funny, that. I know a number of people who are into Gaiman, and love Good Omens, but I can’t seem to convince them to try Pratchett. Near as I can tell, Good Omens is nearly indistinguishable from a book written entirely by Pratchett. Feel free to educate me otherwise.
** GuanoLad, **, I’d be curious to know where Diana Wynne Jones takes potshots at Pratchett. I remember her referring to the term “multiverse” occasionally, but not to criticize it. It seems too bad; I’m sure they have an awful lot of fans in common.
I haven’t read the other replies (so this may be a bit of a pile-on), but your question is a bit of a non-sequitur.
The reason for that is that the “Discworld” books are actually not written for a younger audience. (Though there certainly is the stereotype, at least in the UK, that his typical reader is “an anorak-wearing 13-year-old trainspotter named Kevin.”)
But Pratchett has written several books specifically for younger readers:
[ul]
[li]The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents, which is also sort-of a Discworld novel (it’s implicitly but not explicitly set on the Discworld, and none of the usual characters appear)[/li][li]the “nomes” trilogy – Truckers, Diggers and Wings[/li][li]the “Johnny Maxwell” trilogy – Only You Can Save Mankind, Johnny and the Dead and Johnny and the Bomb[/li][li] and possibly The Carpet People, depending on how you look at it – it was written while he was a teenager, but it’s not really considered a YA novel[/li][/ul]
The rest of his books have been published as “fiction,” and thus were aimed at adults. In fact, he’s a ridiculously successful bestseller in the UK (I’ve heard tell that in some years, 1% of the total books bought in the UK have his name on them), and his audience is quite wide and deep.
Good Omens, being a co-production of Gaiman and Pratchett, is somewhere in between their different styles. If you didn’t like the Pratchett books you tried (though I do wonder about your user name in this context), you might try going to Gaiman’s novels – Neverwhere or American Gods, perhaps. (Though do note that Gaiman’s solo novels are not explicitly humorous, though there is some dry wit now and then.)
The original first British printing of Eric was a large-format heavily-illustrated (by the late, lamented, Josh Kirby) short novel, a lot like the recent The Last Hero. It was printed once or twice, and then allowed to go out of print.
The subsequent British paperback didn’t have the illustrations.
The American paperback (there was no American hardcover, and the paperback was nearly ten years after the UK paperback, as well) didn’t have the illustrations.
No edition of that book printed in the last decade had the illustrations.
I’d have to nominate Prachett as a YA author, myself.
…
Equaled by only one other. Rober Anson Heinlein.
It’s not that they’re too purile to be read by anyone older, heavens above and below, no.
But they challenge and make people think in creative and different ways, while still being accessable to the high-school and younger crowd.
The perfect time to blow one’s mind is when you’re very young.
Shel Silverstein, also, would be in that subversive group.