Newly discovered Terry Pratchett stories published | Hacker News Reader

Newly discovered Terry Pratchett stories published

theguardian.com

77 pointsmadaxe_again23 comments

It's probably more interesting (rather than the argument about whether these should have been published) to note that local newspapers carried short stories for publication. And while we have a multitude of publishing platforms, a local paper like that would have had a far more diverse readership.

I was initially skeptical about whether it violated his wishes. I thought they found unpublished stories. Then someone in his camp posted on Twitter that they were early, previously published stories - not the unfinished ones he didn’t want to see the light of day. And that he had been making efforts to republish his early works in the years before his passing.

Still do, I think? Small local papers will often take practically anything, if it fills pages.

He’s got a book of short stories, which seem related to or variants of some of these, called “The Dragons of Crumbling Castle”, written while he was younger. And the same thing this article says applies to that book as well—some of them are good, some you see the hint of humor that he later hones, but on the whole, they’re not that strong.

That goes for any writer. Take the complete works of Lovecraft, for example, because they fit in one thick volume.

The ones at the beginning are ... skippable. But then he perfected his style.

It's interesting because the idea that they hone their craft is in contrast with the other author aphorism that "you have your whole life to write your first novel, and one year to write your second".

I wonder if the ideas in the early works are any more interesting or creative, but just not written as well.

I think this tension between planning and upfront design on the one hand and just executing something* on the other applies to software engineering as well.

Any artist, or even craftsman in general. You only judge people by their masterpiece's standard. So anything lower will always have that meh feeling.

I think that's generally true, but it can still be interesting to see early works from people who go on to hone their crafts. Sometimes just seeing how they progressed is worthwhile, sometimes the unpolished nature can emphasize brilliance, and sometimes the unintentional breaks from convention have engaging effects of their own.

And "Dragons of Crumbling Castle" is good for that. Like thinking of one of the stories in particular, is very clearly the kind of humor that he perfected in Discworld. But it's just too much, it's not sharp enough. It's a broad blade which he later turns into a scalpel.

And they're not bad stories, just most are a bit dull. There was one I especially loved though, so I'm glad I read them, and my kids liked them as I was reading them out loud.

> There are lots of 1970s in-jokes and references, which may baffle readers from later generations

In fairness, this is something he kept doing, albeit with more contemporary references, hence the Annotated Pratchett Files: https://www.lspace.org/books/apf/

APF is great, but I wish there was a full Annotated Discworld published, like you get with many classic books. There are dozens of little references in each book which aren't documented on this site, not to mention the more recent books which have nothing.

Are we sure these are not AI?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com