Terry Pratchett's unfinished works flattened by steamroller A hard drive containing the unfinished books of Terry Pratchett has been destroyed by a steamroller, in fulfilment of the late author's last wishes. The works were crushed by a vintage John Fowler & Co steamroller at the Great Dorset Steam Fair, ahead of the opening of a new exhibition about the author’s life and work. It is …
I think it was just a joke. And his estate has the resources to be silly, so why not?
If anyone wants to do an academic study of his work, then maybe in 50 years this stuff would be interesting to look at. Maybe he'll be taught in English Literature by that time?
I really liked the Salmon of Doubt. The first couple of chapters of unfinished book starts were rubbish, but I bought it for the collection of his journalism and essays. And that was great.
I feel Adams only wrote 6 good books. The first 3 Hitch Hikers, the 2 Dirk Gently (his best I think), and Last Chance to See.
Pratchett didn't have the same writing-demons. I suspect that if he had early ideas that he really wanted written, he'd have got round to writing them.
He's on record as despising the academic study thing, and as ensuring that all works in progress were destroyed once the final edit was complete.
He had a point I think, there are a good number of authors (CS Lewis, Isaac Asimov for two) on record as stating that all the analyses of their work that they had seen were utterly wide of the mark. So its unlikely post mortem ones were any better. I particularly liked Asimov's comment to one story which includes a distinctly Freudian image on the lines that he could imagine future critics getting very excited about the hidden subtext of this, but actually he'd done it quite deliberately...
When at school sciences chose me but I loved reading almost anything I could get my hands on and read the works the English A'level students had to study and I loved them while they largely hated them. At uni a friend of mine was doing a PhD in english and she'd never read any Sci-Fi and took a book of my collection of browning tattered paperbacks and read around 200 works without breathing - seems she'd never read for pleasure before!
"He had a point I think, there are a good number of authors (CS Lewis, Isaac Asimov for two) on record as stating that all the analyses of their work that they had seen were utterly wide of the mark. "
I vaguely remember a short SF story many, many years ago. It was a time travel thing in a university. Shakespear was pulled into the "present" and attended a course on his work and failed the test. It might even have been an Asimov work :-)
I seem to recall a story (one of Asimov's I think) that involved a scientist bringing Shakespeare forward in time and letting him join an English Literature class so that he could see what people thought about his works so many centuries later. He wound up asking to be sent back to his own time because he was so demoralised and depressed after seeing the sorts of things that people got from his works as well as having flunked the course about himself... Story was told from the viewpoint of the scientist telling off his Lit professor friend for failing Shakespeare, and said Lit professor vaguely recalling a funny speaking individual from his class...
*sigh*
No, I didn't. They're about 2 quid on eBay. Or 4 quid by the time you order a second, as the first arrived faulty but not worth the cost to return it.
It was a joke.. IDE drives are, you know, old?
But well done on your Googling skills there. Obviously better than my joke telling skills.
I got the joke, wondered at the downvotes, then realized you'd posted AC... hence no joke icon... so no way for the pedantic masses to notice.
I shudder to think the fact i recognized it maybe means i am underqualified?
*kicks IDE / USB 2.0 enclosure under desk... and damages antique 10GB hdd*
I have all my old IDE drives (at least those of 80Gb or more) and a couple of IDE external caddies. I use the old drives as removable backup.
I would imagine that if this drive contained actual PTerry writings (as opposed to being a purely symbolic gesture), they were the last external backups of his work, everything else already having been wiped.
It was only last month I dumped a load of MFM drives, controllers and mobos at the recycling centre. I have an actual IBM AT (though with VGA card and AST memory expansion) in the attic. It might still have MFM. I also dumped old "IDE" drives that used same parallel cable but not the regular IDE/PATA port. Also three kinds of SCSI drives.
I think you'll find it was a Parallel ATA (PATA) drive - IDE being what PATA drives developed from.
The terms "integrated drive electronics" (IDE), "enhanced IDE" and "EIDE" have come to be used interchangeably with ATA (now Parallel ATA, or PATA)... but's not let facts get in the way of a good joke........ it was a good joke wasn't it??
Well, it was.
A geek would've chuckled and felt all smug. Knowing nicely they'd have an old box in the loft that'd have requistite connector. Or knowing they could achieve readability with a scratty Chinese adapter they picked up which may or may not function that day.
Then you come along. Geek times ten, and waffle on with a load of cack even normal geeks forgot about years ago.
Got any info on CONFIG.SYS settings for SoundBlasters, or POKE's for the old Commodore 64 while you're on? If you have, don't bother posting back, I'll be ginned up in about 15 minutes and am hardly likely to enjoy it.
I think it was "Son of Cliché" on radio - written by the Red Dwarf authors and including prototypes of Dwarf, and currently repeated on BBC Radio 4 Extra (as is Sir Terry, indefinitely) - that presented a spoof feature on the truth about Marilyn Monroe, including someone who provided a (fake, using her music tracks) revelatory recording of Marilyn; he said, well, no one had asked him about it, and anyway it was on 8 Track tape cartridge and who has those any more...
I think there's something missing there: steamroller named Lord Jericho
After his death, fellow fantasy author Neil Gaiman, Pratchett’s close friend and collaborator , told the Times that Pratchett had wanted “whatever he was working on at the time of his death to be taken out along with his computers, to be put in the middle of a road and for a steamroller to steamroll over them all”.
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OK then. What would such an icon signify?
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The absurdity of us human beings trying to make their mark against the flowing stream of uncaring, unstoppable chaos that is the clockwork of the universe slowly running down.
I suggest a pointy hat as "Embuggerance" is just too big to fit in the icon Box..
In two minds about this:
Stuff found on the hard drive of the late Douglas Adams was compiled in to a book. Much of little value, but I enjoyed reading the first chapters of a new Dirk Gently novel. Franz Kafka wanted his work destroyed, and (according to Quartz Media) we only have The Metamorphosis because his wishes were ignored. It does seem weird to let the dead decide on the best course of action for those of us left behind.
We're going to face this more often, and should be thinking about our own digital detritus as well of that belonging to the rich and famous.
It does seem weird to let the dead decide on the best course of action for those of us left behind.
Not when it's their works, and their legacy, it's not.
Would you ignore the wishes of your parents on how they are buried / cremated etc after they are gone?
Both Rob Wilkins and Rhianna have pledged that there will never be a continuation of Discworld, in accordance with Terry's wishes, and that's as it should be.
Would you ignore the wishes of your parents on how they are buried / cremated etc after they are gone?
Maybe. Depends on what those wishes were. As it happens, as you say, after they are gone, their wishes don't really come in to it that much because there is no "them" anymore.
This actually has legal precedence, if the wishes of the deceased affect the living unduly, the executor can set them aside. Eg, you might want to be buried at sea in a burning Viking ship, but your executor may as easily decide to bury you in the local cemetery to save money.
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