I read "The Dark Side of the Sun" when the paperback arrived here, and the author stuck in my mind because of his humour. Then "Strata," and when "The Colour of Magic" arrived I remember thinking, "This bloke's got this fantasy stuff well-sussed."
Sometimes I agree with the "don't start with TCoM" crowd, and sometimes I don't. I think it comes down to how the potential reader appears, if they are the type to appreciate the fantasy tropes being held up and giggled at, then start with TCoM, otherwise head for one of the first book of one of the sequences.
]]>I do take your point, though. I'll recommend TCoM more strongly to people who grew up with high fantasy than I would most other people.
]]>The thing is, the series is so diverse that you could find a Discworld book for everyone and anyone somewhere in the series.
]]>Other than reading "Small Gods" not long after it came out, I came to Pratchett only in the last half-dozen years, mostly via the audiobook versions. My work entails long periods of mind-numbing boredom; I have plenty of time for listening, not much for reading nowadays.
One night I was zipping down Interstate 40 at about three in the morning, listening to "Making Money." During one section I laughed so hard I lost control of the company van, going four-wheels-off and down a wet grass embankment at eighty miles per hour. Fortunately there was nothing unfortunate to hit, and I managed to get the van back onto the highway undamaged, other than a layer of fresh mud.
"Then he looked back at what was rising out of the pot ... a sheep's head ... and ... it's wearing sunglasses."
]]>They should add a warning not to use Pratchett while controlling heavy machinery.
]]>Don't ever think of doing that on a British motorway - the parts of I40 that I've driven (twixt Memphis and Nashville) are a heck of a lot more forgiving than our roads, what with those wide lanes and the acres of runoff area. Here you'll probably end up sliding along or bouncing off metal or even concrete the moment you're off the road surface.
And that's assuming you miss all other vehicles, though at 03:00 you've a reasonable chance of some empty tarmac.
You should survive, but your crumple zones will be all used up.
]]>At that point, it's not 'who pays?' but 'who expenses?' -- and that often comes down to simply 'who has the best accountants who can handle the paperwork most easily?'
I suspect that all SF conventions are tax deductible. Which is entirely reasonable; they're work for the authors.
]]>I don't know how much he was claiming expenses against anyway — I suspect not a lot. I think he was more of the school of thought that says "I like paying my taxes, they pay for civilisation". Remember that he'd had a perfectly acceptable if unremarkable career before the great breakthrough. It was a lovely bonus, so why not be generous? His attitude seems to have been that money was something nice to have, but that hanging on to it at all costs would have made it toxic.
]]>I say "Internet" because things have gone a bit Quantum and have moved well beyond the realm of merely web headers. As well as instructions for nearly every web server, web proxy, app server, app framework, and CMS known to man, there are also instructions for embedding it in email servers, email clients, and even one or two VOIP servers
I think the reddit comment is still the largest list of instructions (though the website and a reddit wiki are catching up)
https://www.reddit.com/r/discworld/comments/2yt9j6/gnu_terry_pratchett/cpcvz46
There's a couple of addons for Chrome and Firefox that will tell you when a site is sending the header. The most notable sites are I think The Guardian, The Register, raspberrypi.org and sites running off the News UK platform (which is The Times and The Times Literary Supplement, but also The Sun and Page Three....)
]]>If there is an author who did more to improve my character through the unpreaching example of his own creations, I couldn't name them. The world lost an important voice at a time we need him more than ever. Banks, Pratchett, I shudder to think who might be next.
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