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A Discworld Site


Pete

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I think my all-time-favourites would have to be Moving Pictures (hey, I'm a film buff and this one covers ALL the greats :)) and Interesting Times cos I like Rincewind, Twoflower and Cohen.

 

Interestingly, I just got permission to use some of Paul Kidby's artwork on the new site, with some restrictions of course, but I now have a few good ideas about where I might start... when I start... :)

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I always remember the first few books with Rincewind and I remember being gutted when there weren't any more! All the books I've read are great though. I didn't so much borrow them as liberate them from my school library... but now I'm older and richer! So I've actually started buying them now!

 

Who knows, some day they may even rematerialise in the school library and my place in Hell may not be so certain :)

 

But maybe not!

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Ooh, err... Eric, Sourcery, Interesting Times, The Last Continent... I think that's all. Interesting Times is the one with Twoflower in his home country :)

 

They're all in order too by the way. It may help if before you get to Interesting Times you read The Colour of Magic and The Light Fantastic again as you'll probably have forgotten about Cohen the Barbarian and his diamond troll teeth!

 

Oh, and there's that lovely big illustrated Discworld fable - The Last Hero - if you want an enjoyable read with a multitude of characters complete with brilliant pictures :)

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Actually, read Sourcery before Eric to see how Rincewind winds up in Eric. You can also toss in the Science of the Discworld II, which has a few bits of Rincewind in the fewer bits of actual story in it. From time to time, I get the impression that this champion cross-country sprinting expert in fast moving geography is much smarter than he thinks himself to be.

 

On my last visit to a bookstore, I was disheartened when looking through the bookshelves. They seem to be republishing some of the older books in new covers. Black covers. Mostly black. Black I tell you! Mind you, it means it'll be easier to get some of the harder to get titles like Mort and Eric (well, these two were impossible for me to find at the time). But mostly black with little or uninteresting illustrations? I almost felt like crying.

 

I know, a book is not meant to be judged by its cover. And no, I'm not a crazed purist, but it would be a shame to not be able to enjoy the Kirby covers (not that they were always very accurate (beardless dwarves?), but are most assuredly entertaining and elaborate!) that are just a big part of the series as the stories themselves.

 

Ladies and gents, don't mind me one bit. I think the local publishers in my part of the world are just going for a cheaper and less colourful option (either that or they're trying to ride the Lord of the Rings bandwagon with all those black cover reprints)

 

Oh well.

 

- NKF

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Much as I love the Kirby covers, it'd be nice to see what Paul Kidby could make of the earlier titles...

 

There's a few rough drawings for a cover for The Colour of Magic in the back of his book - "The Art of Discworld"

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In my other bit of spare time (ie. when I'm not near a computer) the planning for this is going quite well.

 

What does everyone think of the following line-up for site content:

  • News
  • Events
  • Reviews
  • Interviews
  • Competitions
  • Forums
  • Shop
  • Links

The events listing would be for fans to add dates as to when tehy might be putting on a theatrical version of one of the books, or for staff to add book signing dates and whereabouts and just about any other Discworld-related event you can think of.

 

Reviews is for visitors to review the books. Unlike the review system at Amazon for example, you will not be able to give a book a rating. This is quite unneccessary since the majority of people sould be able to express their views well enough in the actual review.

 

Interviews will start out as a list of interviews from various locations about teh web along with links, titles and dates as well as who they're with. I'd hope we'd be able to land a few ourselves though.

 

Competitions - Easy one here. Creative competitions to win Discworld prizes. We'll dispatch them direct from your local Amazon store (so long as I can translate the local language :)).

 

Forums are self-explanatory, as is the shop - a mini-version of Amazon with some Discworld-related pages added in for good measure to save you all using the search form :)

 

Links would be links ot any other Discworld site out there that we think might be of interest. Oh, and there would be a lovely HTML newsletter too I guess.

 

Err... would you want anything else whilst I'm scribbling down ideas?

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  • 2 weeks later...

HAven't read that one... Just read Interesting Times and now reading Jingo. I saw something in a shop that confuddled me beyond belief though... Maybe someone can help me out with this.

 

Terry Pratchett obviously writes other books than Discworld. The nome series for example... But you instantly know a Discworld novel when you see it because it has written on it A Discworld Novel!

 

What about his books, A Hatful of Sky and there was another one with a very Scottish looking theme... Neither are included in the discworld series list at the beginning of the books, they're listed as 'other books by Terry Pratchett'. But they say on the front cover A Story of Discworld...

 

Any ideas?

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Wee Free Men and A Hat Full of Sky are technically in the Witches series of books, however, they do not feature Granny Weatherwax as the main character - just a supplimentary character. These books are classified as books for younger readers, but that's rubbish if you ask me. It just makes it confusing for us to go and look for them when the children's section is on the other side of the store from the fiction. :huh: But I guess it's just a method used by the publishers to get the books into the children's section.

 

The 'Wee Free Men' are the Nac Mac Feegle. These folk make their first appearance in Carpe Jugulum. The Elf queen, the main antagonist in Wee Free Men, may very well be the same one from Lords and Ladies.

 

- NKF

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  • 1 year later...

"Rejoice for he hath resurrected the thread from thee deeeaaad"

 

Since I had the design almost polished off over a year ago, and have tinkered with the design in a spare half hour in the past six months, and then I found a most excellent bit of forum software that I'd not used before three days ago, this Discworld site is going to be a reality inside a fortnight.

 

To be honest it's about bloody time as if I recall correctly it's been under construction on and off for four years now :D

 

I've just got some fiddling with the forums to do (I figured out a good structure to cover all the novels and young reader books in just seven forums, and an easy way for folks to work out which one to post in) and put up some temporary pages here and there with some basic content and hey presto!

 

To anyone wondering why I'm building another site - I feel a bit guilty really for not having finished it four years ago, plus the Discworld series is my favourite series of books and hs been since I was about 12. The thing with me and books is that once I've read them I forget what happened inside of a few months (unlike with TV programmes) so I get lots of use out of them and some of them are showing a little wear now (Guards! Guards! is spattreed with ink and Moving Pictures has been worn down by many readings).

 

Anyhow, thought you'd all like to know. It's really taken a lot less effort than I thought and I'll give you a shout when I need an instant-community™ over there to make it look busy :)

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It had better not live fats and die yo gnu. Now who said that? Damn, must go and re-read the books.

 

uriaheep: Which books did you read? There are quite a number of books in the Discworld series, and it's generally hit and miss. There's actually a variety of series within the books that can be formed, like Rincewind, Vime's guards, Susan Death, the witches and a variety of stand-alones like Pyramids and some over-arching themes like the UU Wizards and Death. Some of the earlier books, like the main Rincewind books, were quite rough and had a lot of ideas that were just being formed. Later on, the writing and mythos gets a lot tighter - but no less funnier.

 

Aha, we'll hook you yet!

 

- NKF

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So far my favorite part is in the Eric book which goes something like:

 

Rincewind, Eric and some explorer are tied on the top of a pyramid by some natives, being sacrificed. And the explorer says something like:

"Well there's one good thing in all this."

Rincewind thinks to himself how he hates when people can find something good in situations like these, and says: "Oh, what's that?"

"At least we have a marvellous view from here."

To which Rincewind replies: "Yes, I'm sure it's a view you'll enjoy for the rest of your life." :D

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It had better not live fats and die yo gnu. Now who said that? Damn, must go and re-read the books.

 

uriaheep: Which books did you read?

 

- NKF

 

Not sure but Death features heavily in one of them. My very good friend reads nothing else and I agree you can't judge a whole series by a couple but read Gimli's post above. The bit he quotes is just a reworked joke from years ago, the one about Jesus on the cross.

 

Keep trying but I doubt you will convince me. Anyway, it's good to have a critical eye within the ranks. :)

 

I read Douglas Adams Dirk Gently series and thought the same about them. A few good 'one liners' but not consistant.

 

Go on - suggest the best book to read, I may give it a go. :D

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The book to read, especially if you like your films and know the classics, is Moving Pictures.

 

Trust me.

 

Also, I'd point out that Discworld is supposed to resemble our world with similar jokes and goings on. It's the situations that make the jokes funny.

 

Also, they're not supposed to be a laugh-a-minute. They're suppsoed to take a poke at how ridiculous our world is with occasional humour, not be 99% comedy and 1% plot :D

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