Our beloved master, Lord Pineapple is cool on the comic-sci-fi of Terry Pratchett
Any of you geezers like him?
Pratchett is GOD! Why do you think I picked this nick?
Few writers manage to make their stories funny, exciting and give good food for thought, like he does. It’s a shame that it’s regarded as “brainless fantasy” by those who only look on the cover.
The Discworld is an excellent mirror of our own world.
Another Pratchett fanatic checking in…
He’s one of the only authors that can make me laugh out loud, or giggle uncontrollably, whilst reading…
Cricket
On top of that, he’s endlessly re-readable. If I’m out of books and can’t get to the library/bookstore, I can always grab an old Pratchett and dig right in. I’ve gone through Small Gods at least six times. It’s the Life of Brian of literature.
It’s due to Terry Pratchett’s recommendation - in an interview, although I have met him (we have a mutual friend) - that I discovered the Straight Dope!
Like Miller I can re-read his books again and again. Aside from the enjoyment, there’s so much in them that one reading isn’t enough to get all the jokes.
Geezers, huh? Yeesh.
Pratchett is brilliant. I think my favorite so far is Mort, about Death taking an assistant. Death is probably my favorite Pratchett character, with Cohen the Barbarian coming in a close second.
Death is my favorite, for sure. My favorite “setting” for the Discworld books is the City Watch. Good lord, those books crack me up. And I absolutely agree on their re-readableness, not that that’s a word, or anything.
I’ve only read 2 Pratchett books: The Fifth Elephant and the one about the girl who becomes a wizard. I loved both of them so in fact I’m going to raid my sister’s bookshelf tonight since I’ll have nothing ebtter to do. Any recomendations?
Also I love Gaspode great nickname and great sig.
The amazing thing about Prachett is that he has gotten better during the series. And not just better, tremendously much better, deeper, and wiser in every way. What started as dimly comic romps through a silly landscape are now deep social satires, political commentaries, parodies of modern life and more. And they are funnier now than they used to be, honestly laugh out loud funny.
The best thing is that virtue has been rewarded. Pratchett is the best selling author of any kind in the U.K. (Although Rowling may be beating him out.) And his publishers seemingly are trying to push him to those heights in the U.S. Let’s all hope.
Ah, If only our master could write about the three-headed world as good as Terry Prachett writes about “Discworld” Not been on the net for two days, he/we read “Thief Of Time” instead.
Oh you lucky, lucky people, you can stick your stupid “Star-Wars” right up your jacksy, cos that is not sci-fi, just mindness rubbish. Prachett is a genius and should win the Booker!
I am another Pratchett fan and have been for a number of years. I love the character DEATH and the City Watch, they are great.
One thing which really annoys me is the way that Sci Fi and Fantasy are sometimes looked down on as inferior to other forms of writing. IMHO, Pratchett is one of the best authors, regardless of what genre is beign written. As has been mentioned above, the books are entertaining on a number of levels, the Discworld has been built up to be a very rich and varied setting for the novels and many of the characters are well written and very substantial. I think that people have a perception of the genre which leads to it being sidelined a lot of the time.
Rick
Thanks to Terry Pratchet (and a little help from Fionn for having a good number of his books), I started reading for fun.
I always hated to read, because I could never find a book to keep my interest past the first five chapters. I love fantasy though, and his books are just GREAT. My first book of his was Soul Music, and I just found it amazing. Plus, I’m a big rockabilly fan, so the fact he had an Elvis archtype in it made it all that much cooler. Death’s attempt to forget were amazing. His stuff is really great, and although I’ve managed to branch out and start reading other things (even some without trolls and dwarves), I have a list of other books to read.
My personal favorite is Small Gods.
Another Pratchett fan checking in. The near-constant references to him in Cafe Society finally got me to the library to check him out. “The Colour of Magic” was all right, but I was expecting something closer to Douglas Adams, so it seemed inferior. I tried and failed to get into “Lords and Ladies,” and I was ready to chuck him.
But I persisted, in part because he’s one of the few writers who does not use chapter headings. It’s impossible to reach the end of a chapter and say, “That’s it. I’ve had it.” And over time, he grew on me, particularly during the books about the City Watch. But it was “Wyrd Sisters,” with its Macbeth references, that gave the hint that there’s something more here.
What’s even more amazing is that not only did he hook my wife (who loves various genre fiction but is very, very picky), she advocated BUYING ALL HIS BOOKS. Mind you, she is a Class AAA cheapskate, and she views every book I buy with a skeptical look that says, “Did you really need that? We do go to the library, you know.”
So you can imagine my shock when she said, out of the blue one day, “I think we should buy the rest of the books on Amazon. It’s going to take years before we can buy them all secondhand.”
She wanted “The Last Hero,” too. And the Mort comic. And the Discworld guide. And the Mapp to the world.
“Uh, dear, I think that’s going to cost a bit of money. At least over a hundred dollars.”
“OK.”
::sound of jaw hitting floor::
I think I’ve just about convinced her that we NEED to buy “The Night Watch” when it comes out in England later this year. I saw the cover art on Kirby’s (I think) web site, and it’s a knockoff of the Rembrandt painting of the same name.
So, now I’m happy reading my way through the books a second time, and waiting for the last two (“Witches Abroad” is one of them) to be republished in paperback later this year.
I am a happy man.
Great Author He is one of the few I can reread at any time.
My list of books that can be read repeatedly
1)Good Omens by Pratchett and Neil Gaimen
2)Small Gods by Pratchett
3)Calliahans Crosstime Salon by Spider Robinson
4)Wrack and Roll by Bradly Deanton
5) Any of the first 3 Arkady renko Books by Martin Cruz Smith.
I think that Small Gods is very much more than “Life of Brian” - it’s so much more profound.
Aside from that - for beginners, I would rec. reading out of order, and starting with some books that are not conntected.
I too, started on The Colour of Magic and thought ‘what’s the big deal?’ Then I picked up Fifth Elephant and was hooked. When re-reading them, the first couple of books bug me a bit, since TP is trying to make Discworld believable, inserting explanations for the cosmology. To me, Discworld is ‘real’ in a sense, since it’s so easy to recognise our own petty little things. It doesn’t need pseudo science to suspend disbelief.
I’d start with Small Gods, Moving Pictures, Pyramids and then Mort, Reaper man and Soul Music leaving The Hogfather till later. Then work way through them, taking the ‘Night Watch’ series first, then ‘The Witches’, the ‘The Wizards’, round off with Hogfather and then take Thief of time and The Truth. By now you’re hooked for life and feeling sorry for yourself, because - even though he’s been more productive than Stephen King - you still want more books to read.
Not to worry - there are his childrens books (enjoyable for adults too) and the Latest of them The Amazing Maurice and his educated Rodents is a Masterpiece, is worthy of awards, great literature, dark, funny, provocative… And it shoots down literature for kids in a very good way. Pratchett really understands kids.
Being a total geek, you now list the ultimate fansite among your favourites in your browser, and start reading the annotations… You’re done for and end up like me: Reading the books over and over, sitting on the subway, giggling to myself, with a paperback with a cover that is soooo geeky, it’s unreal.
To round off: I love when characters do cameos - esp. DEATH who tends to show up (snicker) when you least expect HIM. 
Good Omen (not Discworld) is easily one of the ten best boooks I’ve ever read.
Favourite characters: Gaspode, The luggage, Angua (She’s hot - - - and I love dogs:p ), Nanny Ogg, CMOT Dibbler, Mustrum Ridcully and Susan Sto Helit. And of course Rincewind… The Best Anti Hero ever.
I could go on, but enough is enough …
I love Pratchett’s stuff.
Until very recently though, it was almost impossible to get his books here in the US.
However, a run of inexpensive paperback versions came out recently, & his popularity among the sf/fantasy set is booming.
And, ThreeSarahBirds?
The word isn’t “geezer”.
It’s “geyser”. The girls who meet guys like me prefer the term “geyser”. 
Apparently, TP is a fan of Cecil’s. From the lspace.org Web site:
“Whenever I go to the States I always return with my luggage stuffed with Panati’s and Straight Dope books [See the annotation for p. 165/107 of Good Omens ] (I’ve seen the Straight Dope books here, but never seen an imported Panati (they’ve got titles like “Extraordinary Origins of Everyday Things”)). I’m afraid I spend money like water in American book shops; I dunno, they just seem more inviting.”
I first learned about Discworld through the game. The PSX version was one of the first adventure-type games I managed to find for the platform. It was also the most insanely insoluable, though everything makes a sort of crazy sense once you know the solution. Now I have all the games, but I’ve never actually bought any of the books, because as it happens I’ve married a full set of them, which has worked out pretty well so far.
[nitpicker mode on]
That’s Bradley Denton. Always spell authors’ names correctly. They get so little else out of life.
[nitpicker mode off]
oh, Pratchett is indeed God - though, considering his healthy disrespect for certain aspects of organised religion, he might not thank one for saying so. The City Watch are great, as is Death, and of course, Magrat, (who gave me my Yahoo name), Granny Wetherwax and Nanny Ogg.
All great stuff - and good social/political satire.
<departs singing tunelessly - “the hedgehog can never be buggered at all”>