Sir Terry Pratchett: 'Imagination, not intelligence, made us human'

my name is Michael Williams and I'm the head of programming at the wheeler Center we're very proud to be hosting tonight's event in what is possibly the most hideous theater known to man now you made a suitably enthusiastic welcome for our guests but before I go into a lengthy introduction that is completely redundant I'd ask you once more to join me in welcoming Sir Terry Pratchett I don't know how you feel Terry but I might just ask them to applaud on and off throughout the hour and we might leave it at that in the beginning was the word and the word was in which I think you'll agree isn't a very promising start but luckily the word was quickly followed by a sentence and as far as sentences go it was an absolute cracker in a distant and second hand set of dimensions in an astral plane that was never meant to fly the curling Stalinists waver and part that is of course the 1983 opening sentence of the color of magic the sentence that introduced the world to the Discworld novels the many years since then have seen at no end of achievements that we might add some of which we might get through in the hour or so ahead but include such things as in excess of 65 million books sold 37 languages is the number I could find but it seems to be going up by the minute it's there are some 38 Discworld books and to kick us off tonight we're going to hear a little bit from the 39th Discworld book which none of you have at your disposal not one of you so I might ask just to get things started Terry could you set up the scene set up what we're going to hear Oh in the early stages of the book thud commander vines finds himself in the countryside a concept which is as alien to him as the far side of the Moon Commander vines after all believes that far too much fuss is made about trees which are in fact as far as he is concerned just stiff weeds and during the course of his of his perambulations he comes across what you might call a village supporting match which only serves to stiffen his belief that everybody who lives in the countryside is either insane no basically insane and he finds himself watching on the village green the game known as Crockett over to you professor this is my keen young Jungian system insistent yes Bob like can I have a day off I don't have that many honestly hi I'm Rob yeah okay blimey it really his green isn't it it really is okay from the top okay so Sam Vimes has dropped into his local country pub where he learns at a fascinating local hobby and meets an old adversary vibes was becoming aware that the pub was filling up mostly with some other sons of the soil but also with people who whether they were gentlemen or not would expect to be called so they were all colourful caps and white trousers and spoke continuously outside horses and carriages were filling the lane hammering was going on somewhere and Jiminy's wife excuse me was now manning or more correctly womaning the bar while her husband ran back and forth with his tray Vimes took out limes looked out of the grubby window regrettably the pub was that most terrifying of things picturesque which meant that the windows consisted of small round panes fixed in place with lead they were for letting light in not for looking out of since they've bent light so erratically that it nearly broke one pane showed what was probably a sheep but when you looked at it actually it perhaps was more like a whale until it moved when it became a mushroom a man walked past with no head until he reached another pane and then had one enormous eyeball young-sam would have loved it but his father decided to give it eventual blindness and miss and stepped out into the sunshine ah he thought some kind of game oh well biomes wasn't keen on games because they led to crowds and crowds led to work for coppers but here in fact he wasn't a copper was he it was a strange feeling so he left the pub and became an innocent bystander he couldn't remember when he'd been one before it felt vulnerable he strolled over to the nearest man who was hammering some steaks into the ground and asked what's going on ear then realizing they had spoken in copper rather than in ordinary citizen he added oh if you don't mind me asking the man straightened up he was one of the ones with the colourful caps haven't you ever seen a game of Crocket sir it's a game of games mr. civilian vibes did his best to look like a man eager for more delicious information judging by his informants enthusiastic grin he was about to loot learn the rules of Crockett and whether or not he wanted to well he thought I did ask at first sight sir Crockett might seem just like another ball game wherein two sides strive against one another by endeavouring to propel the ball by hand or bat or other device into the opponent's goal of some sort Crockett however was invented during the game of croquet as an own and Theological College in ham on rye when the novice priest Jackson field there now the Bishop of quern is took his mallet in both hands and instead of giving the ball a gentle tap dot dot after that Vimes gave up not only because the rules of the game were incomprehensible in their own right but also because the extremely enthusiastic young man allowed enthusiasm to overtake any consideration of the need to explain things in some sensible order which meant that the flood of information was continually punctuated by apology apologetic comments on the lines of oh I am sorry I should have explained earlier that a second cone is not allowed more than once per exchange and in normal play there's only one tamp unless of course you're talking about Royal Crockett vimes died and the son dropped out of the sky giant lizards took over the world the stars exploded and went out and all hope vanished with a gurgle into the sink trap of oblivion and the gas filled the firmament and combusted and behold there was a new heaven one careful owner and a new disk and IO and possibly verily life crawled out of the sea or possibly didn't because it had been made by the gods that was really up to the bystander and lizards turn into less scaly lizards or possibly they didn't and lizards turn into birds and worms turn into butterflies and a species of Apple turned into bananas and possibly a kind of monkey fell out of a tree and realized that life was better when you didn't have to spend your time hanging on to something and only in a few million years evolved trousers and ornamental stripy hats and lastly the game of Crockett and they're magically reincarnated was Vimes a little dizzy standing on the village green looking into the smiling countenance of an enthusiast he managed to say well that's amazing thank you so very much I look forward to enjoying the game at which point he thought a brisk walk home might be in order only to be foiled by a regrettably familiar voice behind him saying you I say you are new Vimes it was Lord rust usually of ankh-morpork and a fierce old warhorse without whose unique grasp of strategy and tactics several Wars would not have been so bloody one now he was in a wheelchair a newfangled variety pushed by a man whose life was knowing his lordship quite properly unbearable but hatreds tends not to have a long half-life and in recent years volumes had regarded the man as now no more than a titled idiot rendered helpless by old age yet still possessed of an annoying horsey voice that suitably harnessed might be used to sew a saw down trees Lord rust was not a problem anymore there was surely only a few more years to go before he would rust in peace and somewhere in his knobbly heart vayam still retained a slight admiration for the cantankerous old butcher with his evergreen self-esteem and absolute readiness not to change his mind about anything at all the old boy had reacted to the fact that Vimes the hated policeman was now a Duke and therefore a lot more Nobby than he was they bite it basically assuming that this could not possibly be true and therefore he totally ignored it so Lord rust envious book was a dangerous buffoon but and here was the difficult bit and incredibly if not suicidally brave one this would have been absolutely tickety-boo were it not for the suicides of those poor fools who followed him into battle witnesses had said that it was uncanny rust would gallop into the jaws of death at the head of his men and was never seen to flinch yet arrows and morning stars always missed him while invariably hitting the men right behind him bystanders or other people peering at the battle from behind a comfortably large rocks testified to this perhaps he was capable of ignoring to the arrows meant for him but a aged could not be so easily upstaged and the old man while no less arrogant had a sunken look rust most unusually smiled of AIIMS and said first time I've ever seen you down here volumes is Sybil going back to our roots what she wants young Sam to get some mud on his boots rust well done her what it'll do the boy good and make a man of him what rhymes never understood where the explosive what came from after all he thought what's the point of just barking out what excuse me for absolutely no discernible reason and as for what what well what was that oh well what was that all about what what seemed to be the tent pegged hammered into the conversation but what the hell for what so not downhill any official business then what said rust bribes his mind spun so quickly that rush should have heard the wheels go round it analyzed the tone of voice the look of the man the slight ever so slight but nevertheless perceptible hint of hope that the answer would be no and presented him with a suggestion that it might not be a bad idea to drop a tiny kitten among the pigeons he laughed well rust Sybil has been banging on about coming down here since young Sam was born and this year she put a foot down and I suppose an order from his wife must be considered official when Vimes saw the man but vayam saw the man who pushed the enormous wheelchair trying to conceal a smile especially when russ responded with a baffled what Vimes decided not to go with where and and instead said in an offhand way well you know how it is Lord rust a policeman will find a crime anywhere if he decides to look hard enough Lord rusts smile remained but it had congealed slightly as he said I should listen to the advice of your good lady vines I don't think you'll find anything worth your metal down here there was no wot to follow and the lack of it was somehow an emphasis I can't help but think that you chose a passage of Lord rust to punish Rob in some obscure way to make him have to say what that many times in a short space of time but that passage apart from wetting our appetite for snuff which comes out I believe in October summed up something that seems central to me about the Discworld books which is your enduring belief in the importance of the laws of narrative if a policeman goes to a country estate oh my word yes look at look at I mean why didn't they all wish why didn't someone shoot her cute fellow Oh I'll sue the school undertake a an Isis roll three people die who is the number one suspect I think not theirs so does that mean that we can divine as readers of your books that at some point he's going to be standing in a drawing-room commander Vimes pointing his finger at a likely suspect um no why am I not surprised to find you Zig when you could zag oh yes right so tell me a bit about the importance of the laws of narrative because through all the Discworld boards not just the guards books although it definitely features there you your characters are very aware of the importance of story indeed they are characters of story but at the same time understand it and I have to say that whether my warmest recollections was after the publication of the amazing Morris and his educated rodents an American woman and contacting me and she said she was reading to her little girl on her own her lap and there was a very gruesome bit in it where lats are fighting one another and bad things are happening and and she thought this was really over the top and she couldn't bear to read it and her little daughter who was seven patty tail on the nians and said it's okay ma'am it'll all come out good in eventually yeah or something like that you it will all it will all took a lot of happen them and she had this in and so ready the child had learned about a narrative narrative inevitability that the bad guys are going to win sorry to lose lose is what they're going to do so it's been a long day and and she was absolutely certain that the justice would would unfold and as so young and Sue and so likely to be disappointed in later years one of one of the tendencies of reviewers of your books is to point out the way in which they get progressively darker that the early ones that much broader comic novel I prefer more realistic does that does your tendency towards heroes and heroines who are a little more jaded does that reflect your own worldview I think it's the world's worldview I mean one of my recent heroes was Pepe the the somewhat lush designer of Chateau there's a name waiting for a misprint the dwarf for fashion house and he he is a vicious he's as he's as gay as a tree full of monkeys but knows how to flourish a really sharp stiletto when when he wishes to them and I think in in that particular book mean unseen Academicals um I think probably occasionally people cheered him on I don't think there's any occasionally about every time this on the page there's something very exciting about that that in a book like unseen Academical z-- which is notwithstanding the Tiffany aching books the most recent Discworld night yeah the that not only do you return to old friends and like the Wizards and unseen University but you also introduce some new characters that I could easily imagine spawning 18 books of their own from Pepe to Glenda sugar them yeah you do prevent in fact can I just because it's my it's like paid to do this there are not new friends there old friends because they alive as old friends Pepe is only to be there for a couple of sentences when we feel we know him but we've seen him that we have an old mate rather suspect in the loo who's very much like Pepe and as Ferg Linda sugar beam your find a ladies like her everywhere never got on at school mucked about suddenly found at the age of about 25 that she had a class one brain on on her shoulders and although not I suppose we'll see official hero and she was absolutely I think the helloween because in many ways she drove events and I just loved her finding out that she really had Worth and and purpose and it was great fun to alight but what but you see and that's all that's what I should be doing as I always say you can write a nice piece like that but had one lousy dragon and they call you a fantasy writer there's very little in unseen Academical that is fantasy indeed there is very little in my book city's fantasy in the wizards and warlocks way your wizards would be familiar to anyone who spend any time in a university anyway oh yes indeed yes but there's a certain magic to the nature of their cheese trolley perhaps so we have to allow for that sorry you've the acoustics in here I have to tell you they are hearing us in FM you I'm Faye I'm hearing in a.m. it's it's unfortunately that's my mode is I am its default it's a terrible position I'll try and speak out yes what could you have so your point about new characters immediately feeling old so I know the feeling that you have known familiar some 38 or 39 books ago presumably you didn't imagine you are creating a world that you're going to return to again and again and again no no of course not no I'd have cut my wrists miss I do the I I do other stuff and I'm very proud of nation for example but to find yourself really barreling along in a Discworld book is like coming home to a nice warm blanket and then suddenly you you are disturbed by the need to put some kind of plot in there as well did you looking back at those early books though did you set up rules for the Discworld or facts of the Discworld that you now regret did you write yourself into a corner um the arena in which I light is circular no corners allowed you cannot change what goes past ever been there was a fat patrician first and now there was a much much better patrician that isn't so fat but the first one was written by a a less apt writer I don't know don't mean like them it comes down to it I haven't got the foggiest idea how it works then what I always say is um at school I was you know art buchwald once said that in every gang you're going to find the lighter there's going to be that the thug at the top and two lesser thugs you know lift left Henin's jostling for for position and then a few hangers on and then there'd be the writer the smart kid who's a bit smaller a bit weak but can come up with jokes from good nicknames and that sort of stuff and by doing that he earns his place in the gang and so at school that's how I held her you know I did scholars of the teachers and and the whole thing about trolls I remember and looking back on it I was thinking the other day because I all that all these old school books went into the Attic and go where such things go when your mum cleans everything up and I had a whole sequence which the lads followed and it was about a lace of little people called the clay hangers who were we'll only enough and and there's a whole a whole slew of weird characters with names like Mugsy nails who was an escaped convict and all the big be honest he was a slightly smudged pianist so instead of being a big pianist he was a big be honest who said I had a run-in with a with a man with a ventriloquist's apt apt I know all this it wasn't kind of weird but but now I realise that look as it was flying past it was a bits of it we're knocking out a piece of brain now and again and they came up they came up later in a book I mean that I did a whole little drawn series about trolls cuz I've always I've always been on the side of the trolls I've always been on the side of things which aren't beautiful like elephants and tortoises and trolls my wife on the other hand is is a beauty of no ill repute I just wanted to put that in so no over jump there was a real danger of being taken out of context I was there yes and and I kind of wasted my time at school but I wasted my time veiled a fruitfully how much was journalism and extension of wasting your time at school fruitfully actually if think of this as what was what was the rock opera that had pinball with it in it Tommy well it was it was like a kind of tommy tight thing you you you you learn different things in different circumstances and when I left school I was thrown into and I ran away from school as you probably know I was thrown into real life because journalism is real life and I saw my first corpse on the first day at work you know education meant something in those days and and I had sitting Lee and one of the things that the local journalists had to do was cover the coroner's courts and the the various criminal a minor courts in the area and and just like things down and it seemed to me that we never ever got to the truth so there was this kid and he's beaten up some bloke and stolen his money and there was the kid standing there wearing the first new suit he's ever had and there's his mum and you think where did this story start how far we could you look at the him he looks like any other kid and you think I'm just writing down a chapter because something happened a long time ago and then he ends up with this kid beating up some guy and it made me Restless about journalism because whatever you got was only a shadow of the truth you just had enough truth for the clock to light down and nail that as what happened whereas perhaps the greatest crime may have taken place long before the boy had been born but you could never track the unit down the universe and that's why I went into features because at least you had learned to draw breath and so from that I was already lighting on the side and and indeed selling many short stories and and but with features I I did very well I remember I was in a and I was working enough and newspaper in Paris my mother in Bristol and NASA died remember NASA and the editor put his his face round the door and said anyone know anything about NASA we've got to have about 40 words in next 15 minutes and I volunteered I knew bugger all about NASA but I had the journalistic talent of watching the television while the same time going through the press cuttings having a bit of a think taking a jolly good stab at it and then writing what was actually a very very good or battle or bitchery of NASA heaven knows why it was all smoke and mirrors but when the smoke blew away the mirrors were still there you're a Wikipedia journalist ahead of your time yes so leaving journalism behind do you find in your new mode not so new now as a novelist that you feel closer to being able to write about the truth um well yes I think sometimes but you have to stir it in because the truth as we know is not very palatable any truths more or less so it's a balancing act between truth and story yes and trees and consequences no I it's I don't really set out to do anything but firm to get readers early the next book but somehow seriousness trickles under the door can't keep it out I'm going to ask for a show of hands from the audience because I think any fans of Sotiris work will be divided I want to show of hands for people for whom the watch books of their favorites amongst the Discworld now the witches Tiffany aching Excellency are see the indecision is now breaking in and what about death and Susan Stowe Hillard I've never seen such an evenly divided crowd even allowing for that woman there who put a hand up every time well put it like this you see Discworld is like glugs because when you can't go get coke you're going to get a good old cannabis and when you can't get cannabis you're legally out at the outside of a dead line awesome so any Discworld is better than no disk well and yet among my favorite Discworld books is monstrous regiment and I like I like that because I had to work on it and I had to go and do a bit of research in a nice little place in London run by ladies who like other ladies very much indeed highlighted and I did a awful lot of look of the best kind little search the search which probably is never going to take you in you every assessment so much fun to do like how it's possible to piss standing up and the famous and and the famous invention of the first of all initially the leather trumpet and then the silver one for ladies of high birth and and and some some truths about our ancestors which was around about the time of the Peninsular Wars people very rarely saw anyone else without any clothes on you might find that surprising but people almost even used to bathe with some kind of shift sounds like my time at university to be they just didn't bathe and I learned a lot of other thing like how many how many women actually fought in the Civil War as men and and how that gradually happened and there was one beautiful thing I came across about her a state a hellish driver a stagecoach driver in the Old West who was renowned herb for the you know crassness when dealing with people who tried to lob the stage and things like that and she was a very good stage crime she was a very good stagecoach driver but all know none of the men ever found out she was I'm in a doctor when examined her when she dies they found that good old bill that had at least one child a lot of that thing sort of thing used to happen in the old way at rest because that was the new old indeed think of it have you ever seen pictures of Annie Oakley well they thought she was a looker object just shows what it was like in the Old West and like this was all done for my own fun really but some of this filtered through into the book and and that's where Jaclyn came from and subsequently when I was still the third the searching for the fun of it I found that in Holland at one point there was a woman who had reach I think it was the position of sergeant and she made it her duty to look at a lookout for other Lana well runaway girls to put them on the right lines so Jaclyn more or less really existed you have to like to read obscure books I didn't and indeed ladies who like ladies very much in small places in London I was going to say as a fan of your books I as a teenager bought a copy of brewer's dictionary of phrase and fable on your recommendation on the front cover how important is book research versus people research people research is the best research of all I mean listen when I was a young journalist I used after the whole thing about being a journalist this you have to be able to speak to people and you have to speak all languages of people and I don't mean sort of Swahili or something like that up a slightly upper class middle class lower class and I remember we used to go we used to cover golden weddings and things like in those days and I was writing down chatting fees Darby and Joan a couple and then I think the wife said but we had sex you know and then next thing that the the the husband I will it's amazing what you could do on a bicycle in those days I have to I have to say my imagination didn't have far to learn and but then as I often tell people nother similar occasion I was talking to a very very very elderly lady who had once been a district nurse I think in probably in the 1920s or earlier she was very very old she told me that she had killed two people I forget about one of them but the other one was a man who was dying of cancer was screaming his way to death and it was not the kind of medication or indeed understanding as we have now and she and his wife put pillows on his head and sat on them until he died hmm because he is screened for waking up the village and that's the truth as well the Tiffany the last Tiffany aching bulgor you've described it as the last one the most resale it's the last one in which she can appear in the next one I do would have to be a children's would have to be an adult book with Tiffany aching in it because you can't play too many games with this I grew her as it were through the series but now she is by the standards of her culture a grown woman the opening of that book has as many of your books with witches both old and young do some beautiful writing about death that seems to come almost from that story that you just told that that question of compassion that Granny Weatherwax is always very good at I think I could have this wrong I'm sorry it's in Cabo jugglin where she has to choose between a mother and a child and which one shall live near and she says to the Midwife who's there who wants the husband to get the choice what's he ever done to you why would you make him go through that how much does writing about death as a character free you up to be very steely eyed about stuff that often isn't dealt with in comic it's never occurred to me not to do it if you see what I mean and it also for want of a better way of putting it it's good copy I mean it it is fresh stuff because we don't talk about it but we know about it I mean I very much enjoys writing gruesome though it was the bit in I shall wear midnight where Tiffany is trying to explain to her daughter her father what if she has to do much to his horror and she tells him about the old woman who died alone with her cats and the kittens with the beautiful blue eyes which were very difficult to get rid of that is actually although heaven knows elderly people found dead and decode in the early stages of decomposition in their beds are not that unusual but um the story itself owes something to the story of a story of Mary Provost have you heard of her no Mary Provost didn't look her best though a while ago I know I know the the mammy Provost was a real star of movies but they were the talk is when the talkies came in she had to retire cuz she had a voice like a bandsaw and she lived all by herself in Hollywood West with her little doggie who loved her very much and one day she died fern fill in the list for yourselves girls but apparently when the priests poke in the dog look how does such a sorrowful look on its face like what else was I to do see you on the dark side not for nothing you talked about as one of the world's finest comics novelists with their with a morbid outlook like that that's so silly if again it's the truth it's the truth and that's the thing it is part of what happens among humans you've never had as best as I can remember death visit one of your kind of central characters now I know him for Eddie's Butler's mesh yeah the day I lay a finger on Sam Vimes I'm a dead man I think that's unanimous agreement but but take Cohen the Barbarian is getting on in years you're not good to have him Cohen the Barbarian old chum is dead oh I've missed the last hero and that's what happens to me there's spoiler alert you've upset dinner you did actually get it wrong in front of so many learning people that that is mortifying and I'm never going to come back from that which is why we are going to throw to audience questions in a moment because you you wouldn't make a mistake as embarrassing as the one that I just made now there is a microphone in the middle on the top floor and there is one in the middle on the ground floor here so you need to make your way in an orderly fashion to that microphone to get to ask some questions but I'm going to attempt to save face with another question now very quickly and that question is about how just a moment you're doing better than most I'm sure I can fix that just like commander vines you appear to have increasingly grandiose of absurd titles being added to your name an Officer of the Order of British Empire is not bad even if it's more often known as an OBE and now your Sir Terry Pratchett has a chamber feather for teddy press sorry look it's only a matter of time before your the right honourable professor Sir Terry Pratchett no way I doubt very much that is ever going to be the case as has the level of fame and adoration that you get now changed your experience as a writer there are some parts in snuff and also earlier in this in vines his series about he kind of wonders how he got there we know because he was a kid from the streets now I was a kid from the lanes which were much healthier places to be but we relived in a cottage which you could enter in a Monty Python game you know you had no roof no floor no walls luxury but it had but it had built into it part of Discworld nanny Oggs tin bath was on our wall in antiag clipping her toenails in the bath was my dad once upon a time as a little kid watching these boomerang rules gossip wondering why they didn't come back to strike Jim Riya and the old Ilsan toilet of course I fax that for all you guys have got in Australia but um where it was your you all all week are you crapped into this really dusting care is a touch of deodorant in it and then in the on Saturday one of my dad's chores was to dig a big hole and tip it all in and next summer we would have the biggest most tasty tomatoes that you've ever had and no one ever got sick so we're but I said in in my inaugural lecture other at Trinity was that when you're an author the black meal enters your head there's another you that watches you so all experience that you have is grist for the black mill you come to your comforting your mother because your father is dead and the sight of a bit of you that is in the black male is saying this is what it this is what it looks like to come what it seems like to come for your mother when your father is dead and this is then lodged into the library somewhere and it's kind of shameful but you can't you can't help it I mean that's why I'm from out of that feeling comes a lot of Tiffany aching where she has first first thoughts and second thoughts and third thoughts and possibly four thoughts which think what the other thinks about what the other thinks about the way they think about thinking I can see a cube forming here in the middle so rather than indulge myself and continue to ask questions at the gentleman in the middle mindful that there are about a thousand people directly behind you if you could keep it on the PP side we'd all be grateful I'll be very quick um sorry quite loud I've always felt while reading the Vimes scented books that although Vimes is not terry pratchet through vines we probably most clearly hear the voice of terry pratchett do you think this is true this is the impression that I get while reading them how do you react to that idea um you are probably right but to an extent so does Tiffany aching and sometimes even wince mean for heaven's sake I think I channel and it actually does work like that you can pick the character for the book you want to write and and and that that is the voice the nice thing about doing it like this is that once you have Tiffany aching once you have fines they drive the plot your stick vines in the middle of a murder or or terrible theft or whatever you just you've just wound up the elastic and away he goes and same with Tiffany there are a range of ways in which they can act I but they will act in those ways I mean I think I rather fell in love with Tiffany because she just got on with the job the whole time it didn't matter what went long she which wasn't in really in the blame game game and above everything else she here she gave me the opportunity to light the line above her she saw what the prisoner calls the sky but what she intended to call the exit Rover's weather like that and I like the way she had I very much like the way she handled things in I shall wear midnight and I liked and I cherished her the anger that melted Flint at the end you know as a instrument for me to play on I think she was one of my best were better than Granny Weatherwax who I think she nails surpasses but still doesn't have that long-term wisdom that granny has that was a very nice question nice turn nice answer the UM just before we go to the next questioner just an extension of that if through your characters we can know a bit of what you think is it right to divine that you're a bit of a fan of tyranny then um well you see the hope has anyone seen this scorpion Pete I mean learn to be one well well that's the whole point you got you got in a nutshell veterinary has a metaphorical scorpion pin and and he as it were positions it in the mind of the people so that he doesn't have to go I mean it's really difficult I mean they're very hard to keep underground and then they need feeding you know and and I mean the whole point you folks filming the scorpion pit what have you done you've now just crushed half a dozen pride scorpions it just it just doesn't work fair enough we might go up to the top for the next one so we're going up closer to the hideous green ceiling for the next question so Terry I spent a unforgettable 14 hours in situation not too similar to the nurse you described earlier with my father which I would not have gotten through with that Granny Weatherwax is example so I wanted to say thank you for that but my question is now that Rihanna's done with Heavenly Sword and Mirror's Edge is she working on the nation game and if not why not um I am sure you guys know about the project which has I have to say the unofficial label of CSI and more pork Rhianna will be working with the guys so that means I've got a you know I believe in family that's how I clean my teeth you know more and and she's already done a CSI thing for one of the things she's done and and she knows how I think and I know how she thinks pretty much and I I always said if she ever wanted to do Discworld when I'm gone and she said well that's kind of you in an unkind kind of rage and it's a yeah it it's going to be fun because if you can't have a lot of fun with with a fantasy police force then where can you have fun well I actually can think of a lot of places that it's going to be very good I think for those who are unaware of a TV adaptation based around the guards books I ask you just to talk amongst yourselves when you leave this theater to try and decide who is humanly capable of playing Nobby Nobbs and if you can if you can answer that you're a better person than I am Bob nor besom is a state of mind the one the guy who played Nobby Nobbs in hogfather had it absolutely right because although Nobby Nobbs is well Nobby Nobbs he's quite proud of his nob eNOS we'll take the question from the woman down here thank you very much you give solve our creativity and imagination and I also want to thank you for the strength of your voice in talking about death and assisted suicide I'm on the committee of the Victorian organization dying with dignity we're working towards law reform to enable legally physician-assisted Danya yes signing such as they have for example in Switzerland and in Holland and then Belgium and in our example and in some parts of and I think there's something there's another state that's gone I thought Washington State was doing in there that they are they have and Oregon State - I heard you your interview with Ramona cover this morning in which you talking about assisted suicide said - what are you doing and I love that and I want to ask you what should we be doing we well here is the thing and I really let me I'll deal with this because I've been talking so much about it but it's it's there's not much to laugh about all those I bet there'll be a laugh before the end of the exposition the opponents of assisted dying and by which I mean people who are possessed of a very bad and incurable illness and who of their own free will asked to die come up with all kinds of arguments against it of how it can go long and they are knit and as I said to a journalist earlier today the trouble with the press was it believes in balance and that's fine people like me talk about assisted dying and we explain things and go through things and point out that it's done here and so forth and these are think this is how it's done and they nod and then they go to see the people who are only bother side who say and this this is really hot this is really true death squads and again I met a journalist that said that and I said when I talk about something like assisted dying I expect journalists to pummel me a bit Joe to get the facts out so that I'm on my toes but I expect that the other side should be pummelled a bit and I said why did you say to the person exactly how do you think that a modern stable democracy goes from assisted suicide to the burning of elderly ladies in the furnace which is what death squads would appear to me what did you not ask the person to clarify that and I said oh well no and I thought you don't deserve to be a journalist and then the press seemed to to cower away from actually asking those questions as if inside is if you shouldn't because God might be in there somewhere and he wouldn't like it very much there's my Nath and so you know I would like parity of interrogation both sides should be asked to explain exactly what they mean and as I say several perfectly decent democracy's not known for being stupid or unkind have running been running assisted death for some time now and I think the Holland and Belgium version is a very good one so what you should do about it you say to the government why are you holding out against this and the moment they mention God then you should actually revolt because let me be quite clear I've spent quite a lot of money recently helping to renovate a small church near where I live and I get on very well with the Christians there and I got the Church of England well I don't go to any church at all and never have done but the church I don't go to is the Church of England I wouldn't not go to any other Church because I kind of like because I was looking at the guys coming out at one time and I thought I think I know why I like these people what they have discovered is what I call Jesus light which is this oh my dad seemed to think like this Jesus decent bloke said a lot of good things look after other people look after your parents don't steal and generally be a good citizen and this in in this he was echoing wise men of every culture speaking in slightly different ways all all through history and they have the people who believe in what I call Jesus light grasp that even if they don't think of it like that and live their life like that like my parents did and they know that we should be excellent to one another a beach actually a phrase which uttered by uttered by a couple of mop heads actually actually is well within the tradition I'm not certain about playing the guitar but being excellently well another is okay and and and that's and people are happy with that what they don't like is God use as a hammer God telling you you shouldn't do this well I don't know what the position is with homosexuality here heavens Betsy I've been to the Mardi Gras I along with a bloke that didn't understand exactly how it worked yeah no something's Australia's big girls aren't they and and and the thing is that the that when I was when I was a kid a big fuss was made about homosexuals and and actual crytal from for quite a long time now you can't me you can't move for the buggers and it and it doesn't matter because you know they wander around like real people and nothing happens you know they keep themselves themselves as it were and and and that you cannot you cannot work in the entertainment industry and and and not get on with gays and it doesn't it what happens is the world always cleans itself up and the the the generations stream away and so there are changes and a generation grow up in is growing up with rich you know homosexuality is something that happens it's normal and yesterday was normal and yesterday goes on being normal and they're bitter to tie and I think I say this among the books and the smallest little you know I guess it's to do with some Valley as the days pass being normal so they become normal and people think it did that in those days and you know and then of course it's whether we can make love to our dogs after you know they're gonna have to work our way through the whole thing Mirjam I I must confess I must confess that I one of the real heartwarming things I had recently well in the last few years there was a lot of problems when lots of Polish plumbers were coming over to do jobs in the country because all our plumbers were far too posh to actually get down there and put new distinct traps in and and there was AG I don't exactly know what part of the Indian subcontinent he came from this was in in Birmingham yet and he certainly had a turban and he said I don't like this and he said it in a Brahmi voice which I cannot do I don't leave like these foreigners coming over here taking our jobs and I thought hallelujah or Krishna be praised as you like um you've learnt how to be an Englishman and for that matter an Australian they hate all the ones that were here before you and hate all the ones that came I came afterwards I was very nervous there you followed the words making love to your dog with the words I must confess I was there was a train of thought there that had me deeply concerned now I can see a queue of people waiting but I'm going to be quite hard line about this there's going to be one more question from the top and one from the bottom so you need to fight amongst yourselves down the bottom and we'll take the question from the young man upstairs Sir Terry Pratchett I would like to ask you how old were you when you wrote your first book how I wrote it how old was how old is it the first book seventeen I was a slow starter and it was who knows um I got a job on the local papers you know and if you were the new kid you had to do the children's book called the corner which wasn't done very well and I hope these little stories and one of which became the carpet people in fact that in the evenings I would be lighting the carpet people as it were big and then subbing it down to pick it in a story format in the newspaper it's a very collectible item now that's it that's I get it and I as I always say that one reason was I read all the best writers all the best writers in the English language between has been 8m her mid Victorian II era and the 1960s and you learn by watching by her I got to say you learn by washing the Masters which I suppose would also help and the final question no pressure but this is the final question will this world ever have steam-powered Industrial Revolution um I'm in two minds about that you see it already has uh it already has electricity even erratically from the from the Eagles the Duke of Wellington once famously said I don't like the railways they allow the poor people to walk to move about I don't know on the other hand isn't steam wonderful especially if you had a sort of traffic's you know steam the real you know big kettle or you know granny's kettle on wheels and you could have some fun with that but then it would put all the golems out of business and it's I don't know and it's as simple as that thank you for the question I'm going to like you I can't resist a question about the inevitable nature of change and it seems to me even though you have a fairy tales in the Discworld and you have goat burger the publisher publishing at the joy of snacks and the Almanac I can't think of the existence of any novelists on the Discworld is there no room for one no though some are hinted at occasionally and of course that there are certainly in snuff there is a lady lighter I think that's it but no that's so that's it we'll see if the lady writer is partly as of I resisted the urge to ask what happened to mr. Hong when he tried to open the three jolly lat that that father that that's one of the perennial ones yeah I think it is and it's always good to end on a perennial I'll ask you to please join me in thanking Sottero you

Channel: WheelerCentre

Views: 169,486

Rating: 4.9458833 out of 5

Keywords: Terry Pratchett, Discworld, Fantasy, writers, The Wheeler Centre, Australia, Science Fiction, Speculative fiction, books, Imagination (Quotation Subject), Intelligence (Quotation Subject), British Science Fiction Award, Human (Quotation Subject), Carnegie Medal, Writers Guild Award, Smarties Prize Silver Award, Michael Williams, Book, Author, Death (Quotation Subject), Rob Wilkins, Sam Vimes, Literature (Media Genre), Melbourne, Euthanasia, Assisted Dying, Journalism (Film Genre)

Id: SG8xh9q1jBc

Length: 68min 25sec (4105 seconds)

Published: Fri Jan 25 2013

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[u/BadkyDrawnBear]

“Humans need fantasy to be human. To be the place where the falling angel meets the rising ape.”

I swear, the more I reread these books, the more I think that a lot of my basic ethical thinking must come from reading them as a child

[u/deff_jeff]

Credit: https://youtube.com/user/WheelerCentre

[u/gobelin_pret_a_jeter]

well I didn't realize I'd be spending the last 72 minutes watching a YouTube video on my phone but here we are (I had to pause it to Chriek with laughter and text a friend, as you do)

GNU