Moe Lane

This sounds like marvelous news. Admittedly, the miniseries that the BBC is doing of The Watch sounds like it might start riots when it comes out, but that deal was made a few years before this one and GOOD OMENS was awesome. More of the latter, please.

As I said on Twitter: this story will break your heart, but in the good way.

I’m in the middle of going through Late Pratchett — I assume because of Good Omens, and everything — and Raising Steam was on the rotation. It squared away a lot of characters whom I’m quite fond of; squared them away and had them doing well for themselves. …That’ll do.

Why Terry Pratchett’s Night Watch? Because it is the Glorious 25th of May. And in memory of the man, here is a link to the Alzheimer’s Foundation of America.

It’s probably going to be based on the Vimes novels: “Terry Pratchett fans may want to stay close to a television screen over the next couple of years: his comedy fantasy book series Discworld has become his latest work to be snapped up for a small screen adaptation. BBC Studios is developing a six-part series based on the long-running epic novel series.” At least, the working title is “The Watch” and that’s absolutely a tell, there.  For those who don’t know — (more…)

What’s that I hear?  The drives containing those novels got run over by a steamroller, then thrown into a stone crusher?  Yup!  Yup, they were.  At Sir Terry Pratchett’s own request, no less.  I understand.

I also understand this. (more…)

I assume that most of you have read Terry Pratchett’s Lords and Ladies by now, but on the off chance that you haven’t: Terry Pratchett understood folklore. And he knew what lay behind the Victorian flower fairies and Tolkien’s mighty, yet noble Elves. Oh, my, yes, he knew.

So read it, if you haven’t.

And so, adieu to Bugs in the System.

From TV Tropes:

• Interestingly, the surgical team who treated Terry Pratchett for a minor procedure – which after patient questioning on his part, turned out to have become somewhat more complicated and turned into a more urgent Situation – told him afterwards that he’d sat up during the operation, demonstrating the anaesthesia wasn’t quite working, and had a one-sided conversation with an unseen Other in the operating theatre. Pratchett had apparently asked that if he had to go at this point, could a packed lunch be provided? Ham sandwiches with mustard would be appreciated. Apparently he was only offered plain ham with no condiments, and had expressed dissappointment. Terry was both perplexed and oddly reassure by this, and this account of his own NDE – which he didn’t remember at all save through the doctor’s recollection – ended up in a Discworld novel as a discourse between an elderly witch and Death. This is recollected in A Blink Of The Screen, a collection of his non-fiction writings. Hopefully Death remembered the mustard, when the time did arrive.

Seriously, this is pretty dang cool.

!!! RT @Discworld_com: JIM HENSON COMPANY PARTNERS W/ NARRATIVIA TO DEVELOP “WEE FREE MEN” AS FEATURE FILM: https://t.co/k2XQSaINY1

— Diane Duane (@dduane) July 19, 2016

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If this Graeme Whiting had just stuck with being generally dismissive of Game of Thrones, he’d have been fine. I mean: the statement “I’m not going to let my nine year old watch GoT” is an absolutely uncontroversial opinion. Virtually nobody reading this is going to go Oh, sure, it’d be a fun bonding experience for the family. And I figure that not letting my kids read the GoT books until puberty teaches them how to successfully hide things from me is likewise a perfectly valid parenting choice.  So this Whiting guy was actually not in a bad rhetorical place, if he had just been smart enough to realize it. (more…)