Showing results by author "Terry Pratchett" in All Categories

'Just because you can't explain it, doesn't mean it's a miracle.' Religion is a controversial business in the Discworld. Everyone has their own opinion, and indeed their own gods. Who come in all shapes and sizes. In such a competitive environment, there is a pressing need to make one's presence...

All is not well within the Unseen University. The endemic politics of the place have ensured that it has finally got what it wished for: the most powerful wizard on the disc - which could mean that the death of all wizardry is at hand. And that the world is going to end, depending on whom you listen to. Unless, of course, one inept wizard can take the University's most precious artefact, the very embodiment of magic itself, and deliver it halfway across the disc to safety.

Somewhere on the frontier between thought and reality exists the Discworld, a parallel time and place that might sound and smell very much like our own, but that looks completely different. It plays by different rules. Certainly it refuses to succumb to the quaint notion that universes are ruled by pure logic and the harmony of numbers. But just because the Disc is different doesn't mean that some things don't stay the same.

Somewhere in a place so far up there is no down, a ship is waiting to take the nomes home - back to wherever they came from. And one nome, Masklin, knows that they've got to try and contact this ship. It means getting to Florida (wherever that is), then getting to the launch of a communications...

"Look after the dead," said the priests, "and the dead will look after you." Wise words in all probability, but a tall order when you have just become the pharaoh of a small and penniless country whose largesse, and indeed treasury, is unlikely to stretch to the building of a monumental pyramid to honour your dead father. And particularly when your only visible means of support is a recently acquired qualification from the Guild of Assassins.

Although the scythe isn't pre-eminent among the weapons of war, anyone who has been on the wrong end of, say, a peasants' revolt will know that in skilled hands it is fearsome. For Mort however, it is about to become one of the tools of his trade. From henceforth, Death is no longer going to be...

Brought to you by Penguin. Eric is the Discworld's only demonology hacker. Pity he's not very good at it. All he wants is his three wishes granted.Nothing fancy - to be immortal, rule the world, have the most beautiful woman in the world fall madly in love with him, the usual stuff. But instead...

Authorised by Mr Lipwig of the Ankh-Morpork and Sto Plains Hygienic Railway himself, Mrs Georgina Bradshaw’s invaluable guide to the destinations and diversions of the railway deserves a place in the luggage of any traveller, or indeed armchair traveller, upon the Disc.

This is the next in the popular series featuring Johnny Maxwell. Johnny can see the dead, and the dead are beginning to see just how much fun it is to be alive, in another terrific tale from the master of comic fantasy Terry Pratchett...

Reality is all very well in small doses. It's a perfectly conventional and convenient way of neutralising the imagination. But sometimes when there's more than one reality at play, imagination just won't be neutralised, and the walls between realities come tumbling down. Unfortunately there's usually a damned good reason for there being walls between them in the first place. To keep things out. Things who want to make mischief and play havoc with the natural order.

IF NOT YOU, WHO ELSE? As the mighty alien fleet from the latest computer game thunders across the screen, Johnny prepares to blow them into the usual million pieces. And they send him a message: We surrender. They're not supposed to do that! They're supposed to die. And computer joysticks don't...

To the thousands of tiny nomes who live under the floorboards of a large department store, there is no Outside. Things like Day and Night, Sun and Rain are just daft old legends. Then a devastating piece of news shatters their existence: the Store, their whole world, is to be demolished. And it's up to Masklin, one of the last nomes to come into the Store, to mastermind an unbelievable escape plan that will take all the nomes into the dangers of the great Outside.

'A foot on the neck is nine points of the law' There are many who say that the art of diplomacy is an intricate and complex dance between two informed partners, determined by an elaborate set of elegant and unwritten rules. There are others who maintain that it's merely a matter of who carries...

And Grimma said, We have two choices. We can run, or we hide. And they said, Which shall we do? She said, We shall Fight. A Bright New Dawn is just around the corner for thousands of tiny nomes when they move into the ruined buildings of an abandoned quarry. Or is it? Soon strange things begin...

Brought to you by Penguin. 'No one mixes the fantastical and mundane to better comic effect or offers sharper insights into the absurdities of modern endeavour' Daily Mail The Discworld is very much like our own - if our own were to consist of a flat planet balanced on the back of four elephants...

Football has come to the ancient city of Ankh-Morpork - not the old fashioned, grubby pushing and shoving but the new, fast football with pointy hats for goalposts and balls that go gloing when you drop them. And now, the wizards of Unseen University must win a football match, without using magic, so they're in the mood for trying everything else. The prospect of the Big Match draws in a street urchin with a wonderful talent for kicking a tin can, a maker of jolly good pies, a dim but beautiful young woman who might just turn out to be the greatest fashion model there has ever been, and the mysterious Mr Nutt.

'I thought: opera, how hard can it be? Songs. Pretty girls dancing. Nice scenery. Lots of people handing over cash. Got to be better than the cut-throat world of yoghurt, I thought. Now everwhere I go there's...' Death, to be precise. And plenty of it. In unpleasant variations. This isn't real...

'Death has to happen. Tha'ts what bein' alive is all about. You're alive, and then you're dead. It can't just stop happening.' But it can. And it has. So what happens after death is now less of a philosophical question than a question of actual reality. On the disc, as here, they need Death. If...

Not many people can see the dead (and not many would want to). Twelve-year-old Johnny Maxwell can. And he's got bad news for them: the members of the council want to sell the cemetery as a building site. But the dead aren't going to take it lying down - especially since it's Halloween tomorrow. Besides, they're beginning to find that life is a lot more fun than it was when they were...well...alive. Particularly if they break a few rules.

Sir Terry Pratchett was a much-loved writer who gained international fame for his Discworld fantasy series. In this recording we hear—in his own words—about science-fantasy and comedy writing. He discusses his fans and followers, how he enjoys writing and the importance of the Discworld characters. We hear his thoughts on fame and isolation, his attitude to money and about his reaction to diagnosis with early-onset Alzheimer's disease.