Modest Meteor

The Colour of Magic

A capacity crowd fills the cube- and pentagon-ridden enclosure, in the greenish glow of jagged neon overhead. The collective sport a preponderance of glasses, slightly longer than average hair, and a full spectrum of beards, from the sparse to the spectacular. An average age would put the audience in their late twenties, but only at the expense of flattening out the outliers (at seven and seventy-odd). Such is the turn-out at RMIT’s Storey Hall on a sodden Melbourne evening to see Sir Terry Pratchett speak.

Pratchett is an English author of comic fantasy in much the same way as a computer is a box full of wires — while basically accurate (if grossly oversimplified), the description doesn’t come close to capturing what the thing is, nor what it does. Pratchett’s work is not only hilarious (for it is assuredly that), it is also humane, closely observed, richly allusive, frightfully clever and excellent fun. He is best known for his Discworld series, whose stories and characters are scattered about the continental saucer borne through space on the backs of four elephants, who themselves ride atop the Great A’Tuin, the Star Turtle. If it sounds fantastic, well, that’s because it is; if it sounds familiar, then you too likely grew up (or were grown up) in the company of Vimes, Granny Weatherwax, Rincewind and other denizens of the Discworld.¹

Back in the hall, a silence descends. A moment later, a broad-brimmed hat emerges from the wings, atop a substantial beard of its own. Pratchett doffs his cap to the ensuing applause, making a show of orchestrating the ovation — the crowd are happy to oblige. A chorus of cheers swells as the conductor raises his hand. Satisfied and slightly amused, Pratchett takes his seat. Opposite him is Wheeler Centre programming head Michael Williams, his interlocutor for the evening, whose introduction unleashes a barrage of statistics: 65 million books sold worldwide, translation into 37 languages, some 38 titles in the Discworld series alone, written at a rate of more than one a year since The Colour of Magic was first published in 1983. The next in the series — Snuff, we are told, featuring the grizzled and increasingly titular Sir Samuel Vimes — is due out in October. We are treated to a reading by Pratchett’s able assistant Rob Wilkins (in a slip of the tongue, Pratchett refers to him as his “insistent”).

The need for such (insistent) assistance stems from Pratchett’s posterior cortical atrophy, an exotic form of Alzheimer’s with which he was diagnosed in 2007. Since then, he has worked to raise awareness of the disease, as well as contributing half a million pounds to bolster research efforts towards finding a cure. Among its other effects, the condition has robbed Pratchett of his faculty with both reading and writing, and reduced him to a two finger typist (though through some neural quirk he retains the ability to autograph). His books are now transcribed, either by software or the willing Mr. Wilkins.

The reading concludes and the conversation continues. Pratchett avers that though his world may be fantastic, he strives for his characters to remain real and familiar, to exhibit some common humanity (even when they’re trolls and dwarves). “Still,” he says, mock-indignant, “add one lousy dragon and they call you a fantasy writer.”

Did he realise, nearly thirty years and forty books ago, that he’d end up spending such a large chunk of his life in the Discworld? “Of course not, no, I’d have cut my wrists.” This elicits big laughs. Pratchett has something of a knack for leavening the thought of death.

He recalls being the smart, mouthy kid in school, whose early stories contained “all sorts of weird shit.” The Big Bianist, for instance, a slightly smudged pianist. Done with “wasting time at school,” he left to go into journalism. “I saw my first corpse on my first day of work — education meant something in those days.” he says.

Covering the court circuit for the local paper, Pratchett was struck by the fact that they (as journalists) “could never get to the truth” — that the brief chapter of “the boy charged with assault, dressed in his first new suit” was part of a much larger story, the courts concerned with getting “just enough truth for the clerk to write down.” He feels that his work now, perhaps, may be getting at least a little closer.

The temptation in recounting the evening is to merely parrot Pratchett’s best one-liners: “Discworld is like drugs, ‘cause when you can’t get coke you get good old cannabis, and when you can’t get cannabis you lick the outside of a dead rhinoceros. Any Discworld is better than no Discworld at all.”

Williams takes the opportunity for a quick poll of the audience on their favourite story arcs: a show of hands sees Susan and her skeletal grandfather Death edge out the Watch and the Witches as crowd favourites.²

Throughout the evening Michael Williams proves a genial host, and evidently a fan, displaying a deeper knowledge of Discworld lore than a quick click through Wikipedia yields. He does, however, find himself dinged when asking if Pratchett’s anthropomorphised Death might one day befall another of his heroes — Cohen the Barbarian, perhaps, who is undoubtedly getting on a bit?

“He’s already dead,” replies Pratchett, who counters Williams’s self-effacing remarks by adding, sotto voce, “Don’t worry, you’re doing better than most.” And as for his other characters? “The day I lay a finger on Sam Vimes I’m dead.” Uproarious applause.

Towards the end of the night, a question from the audience: is upwardly (if reluctantly) mobile watchman Sam Vimes the character through whom the author speaks most clearly? To an extent, Pratchett concedes, though the same is as true of the hapless wizzard Rincewind, and of Tiffany Aching (the young witch heroine of his recent young adult books), for whom he professes a soft spot. “I rather fell in love with Tiffany ‘cause she just got on with the job the whole time… as an instrument for me to play on, I think she was one of the best.”

Pratchett’s parting advice, responding to a young fan, boils down to this: read. “I wrote my first novel at seventeen — I was a slow starter. But I read all the best writers, from the mid-Victorian era through to the 1960s. You learn by watching the masters.” He stumbles over this last phrase, corrects himself. “I was going to say you learn by washing the masters, which I suppose would also help.”

With a rousing round of applause Terry Pratchett is bade thanks and farewell. Grinning and chattering, his fans file out of the room, leaving only an empty auditorium and a faint greenish-purple glow.

Sir Terry Pratchett appeared at Storey Hall in conversation with Michael Williams courtesy of The Wheeler Centre.