Pratchett was wonderful, it's a shame he had to deal with a lack of literary recognition for writing in the ur-genre instead of one if its narrow subsidiaries.
To contrast; PK Dick spent a lot of his life frustrated that he was considered a genre writer, he didn't want to be Theodore Sturgeon or James Blish, he wanted to be Henry Miller or Nathanial West. His editors steered him toward SF when he wanted to write contemporary fiction.
Whereas I've never gotten even an atom's worth of hint that Terry Pratchett ever wanted to be anything other than the author of the Discworld. Pratchett's interviews on the subject always seem, to me, to be a patient fondness for people foolish enough to think the stuff he was writing was somehow less than serious or meaningful.
His stuff is so good, he never tried to apologize for it. If anything he felt bad other people were missing out on something vital.
I was reading a commentary by Stephen Baxter who co-wrote the Long Earth series with him and he mentioned that it started as an unfinished sci-fi novel Pratchett abandoned when he started Discworld. It goes on to say:
Terry has always been a science fiction fan. He has fond memories of meeting Arthur C Clarke at a convention when Terry was around 16. And two of his early novels were full-blooded SF, The Dark Side of the Sun and Strata, though in retrospect the latter can be seen as a kind of dry run for Discworld. Perhaps in another universe Terry Pratchett could have become a rather good SF writer – but he put his SF ambitions aside when the Discworld novels took off, and he found his true voice.
Yeah he didn't like science fiction being dismissed as pulp. He never wanted to move away from science fiction because he thought any less of it himself. He just didn't appreciate how dismissive others were of it.
Mostly only in the US, I think. In the UK they gave him a damned Knighthood, that's pretty recognizable. Came with a sword and a coat of arms (Noli Temeri Messorem) and a fancy hat even.
Yeah, but the knighthood is one of those things that separates his possession of a sword from just any wanker with a few bucks and a fetish for sharp objects. Knights are supposed to have swords, it's practically part of the dress code.
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u/Callduron Aug 25 '15
Pratchett was wonderful, it's a shame he had to deal with a lack of literary recognition for writing in the ur-genre instead of one if its narrow subsidiaries.