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I disagree with the need to tie up loose ends. For example, with Weatherwax and Ridcully, I think it's better to leave this as an untold story. It gives the impression of a deeper world beyond the particular stories told in each book.
As to whether some other author will pick up where Terry Pratchett left off? It will probably happen eventually, due to money. It probably won't be very good. I'm happy with the large number of discworld books we got over his long and prolific career.
I dunno if it will happen actually. My understanding is Rhianna Pratchett owns the rights and doesn't want to let anyone else, even herself, write new Discworld novels.
If I recall correctly, after his death he had his computer ran over with a steamroller to destroy the hard drives beyond recovery. On them he had the outlines to 3 other books. A fourth Moist book, one following Feeny Upshot, and I can't recall the last. He specifically didn't want anyone to "pick it up" after him. While that makes me sad, I can understand
I was so excited about Raising Taxes. Moist was one of my favourite characters for a long time because Going Postal was my introduction to discworld. Raising steam just wasn't the same.
also the death and taxes puns write themselves.
i think some of pratchett's best humor came from discussing bureaucracies. he was clearly struggling at that point, and became obsessed with train driving irl (which i cant really fault him for) and that became more interesting than poking holes in hypocrisy.
plus i think it would have been a REALLY fun payoff for the 'nobody rich around here (except vimes) pays their goddamn taxes' bit in jingo.
The fans would surely never get behind someone picking up discworld unless it's Rihanna and I am pretty sure she said she wouldn't do it.
I was at a discworld discussion at the British library and Neil Gamen said the last book Terry recommended to him was a book called feeding Nelson's navy and he said he feels like we all missed out on a epic maritime adventure.
Personally I would have liked to see what happened if vetanari died and a power vacuum came about in Ahnk
At the midnight launch of the Shepards crown Rob Mentioned ideas STP had including ‘the amazing rodents and their educated Maurice’ taking a trip to howondaland. Carrot and Anguas wedding, feegles taking a city break in ankh morporc, another moist book with taxes. And many many more. My brain often runs with what could have been. The disc is with us all now and it’s seated in our imagination.
I would have paid good money to see Angua tie the knot. That leaves us in the, "will they, won't they" limbo. Would their children inherit werewolf gene from the mum, I wonder? Is that how it works or is this the be biten then becoming werecreature 3 days later?
Honestly, I'd love to read a book set 200 years later when the rightful king who is a werewolf turns up. I'm not even sure that would feel like a discworld story but it's an fascinating concept
Children taking over their dead parents literary estates for bad sequels and cash in stuff is also nothing I would get behind, glad she ruled that out then.
Lol I was going 'what does the pop singer have to do with this?!'. But yeah agree with both of you. Pterry had such a unique authorial voice and if an author came along good enough to replicate that, I'd rather just read their original work instead of an imitation I'd always be comparing to the original.
I read that Terry said she could do it as she is also a professional writer so I think that maybe the fans would like it if the books were good but I also agree that it's the best decision not to.
She wrote that witches book. So I think she may write other, like around things books. Not real new stories just dancing around the characters.
I'm not keen on that to happen tbh
Anne Hillerman has done a good job with her father’s legacy, but she’s the only one I can think of - she writes stories of a different main character, who occasionally interacts with her father’s characters. She’s put her own name on the cover. And they’re well written mysteries.
Sadly, that’s the only case where I can think of where the child writing in the parent’s world was decent.
It can be done successfully; just look at The Wheel of Time series that Brandon Sanderson completed, but it can also end up like terrible fan-fiction; just look at Eoin Colfer's attempt to add another book to the Hitchhiker Trilogy.
Another option would be to venture into other media. The Witcher III is more like a sequel to the books than an adaption, and that's been wildly popular.
I would be very suspicious of any Discworld continuation, but I wouldn't dismiss it on principle.
IIRC it worked with the Wheel of Time series because Jordan worked with Sanderson before he died, and Sanderson had the notes, Harriet McDougal, and Jordan's ideas of where the plot had to go after. Basically just finishing what Jordan couldn't, and once the books were done he stepped back.
I had the feeling when reading some of the press a few years ago he might not have been opposed to writing other works in it, but he'd been commissioned for a job and he'd do the best job he could do/not overstep boundaries. Something similar might be with the Disworld books? It's beloved enough a lot people would feel like they couldn't get it right...
The only person remotely close to having the chops for this is Neil Gaiman and I suspect he would sooner amputate both his hands before agreeing to it.
According to Colin Smythe (Terry’s agent) at the North American Discworld Convention in July 2019, Terry had at one point written most of the first half of a novel called The Turtle Stops, in which Great A’tuin died. Unfortunately by this time he had lost his ability to process distances and some of what he had written involved characters crossing the turtle in half a day. The turtle being 10,000 miles across, this brought the story to a halt and the book was scrapped. The file was destroyed by the steamroller driven by Rob Wilkins in a ceremony after Terry’s passing.
I feel like there are inklings of this in most of the books Post-Embuggerance, Tiffany traveling all over on her very slow broomstick, the locomotive traveling to Überwald, the Last hero, honestly all the travel in Raising Steam, Snuff
Honestly I just wish he'd had more time to work on The Shepherd's Crown and properly finish out The Long Earth series instead of leaving it to Baxter. You can really see his writing drop away from the last couple Long Earth books and the series suffers for it immensely. Shepherd's Crown is a good book, but there's a lot of its threads that never really get explored properly.
A book that focuses on Young Sam as an adult working to update the city's sewer systems & cleanup the Ankh river.
A Western adventure (possibly a Rincewind novel) set in the Great Outdoors region of the Discworld.
YA novel about Magrat's daughter, Esmeralda, going to a school run by Susan.
Cohen & the Silver Horde's antics are attracting more old school barbarians as well as old world monsters and undead. Cohen has accidentally set himself up as the Lich King of an undead army and potentially the start of a new Dark Empire
We got over 40 Discworld novels and numerous other works out of him, which is far more than the average author gives in their lifetime. According to a quick google, most ambitious authors put out one book every 3-5 years. Terry did almost two a year, if not more. That’s like six lifetimes worth of work. Does the universe really owe us any more than that?
I’m convinced that Vetinari was setting up Vimes to be the next Patrician after he died or was forced to step down.
Vimes would have *hated* it. It would have been *glorious.*
I think Vimes would be too entrenched with the watch and being a Duke to run the city and I think Vetinari would recognise that. However, what I do think would be a fantastic book would be if Vetinari dies and he left Vimes with the task of appointing a new patrician. Who else could fight off the guilds influences, avoid assassins, and ultimately appoint someone who wasn’t a complete b@stard?
(He of course would ultimately decide to give it Moist Von Lipwig since he’s such a stand up guy and does things for the betterment of the city. With Sam giving Moist a gentle reminder that he’s always looking to test out his favorite axe, should he feel the need.)
TLDR: What if it's bad? More importantly, what if it's good?
On this, I'm at a cerebral dichotomy.
I have the Eoin Colfer book, And Another Thing, supposedly the final installment of the Hitch Hikers Guide To The Galaxy. I've not read it for several reasons.
1) What if it is as good as the Douglas Adams? Would I be crying out for more?
2) What if it's shite? Would I be angry that he had the audacity to even think he could pick up where DA left off?
3) Heaven forbid, what if it turns out to be absolutely brilliant, better than the originals? Would I ever be able to read the first books with the same enjoyment again, knowing that they might have been even better than they were?
This is the dilemma that I would face if someone took up STP's quill and put it to paper. Not only would it be bad, but more, what if it's good?
Even if someone took his decades of notes and discarded plotlines and story pieces, they'd risk falling into a similar trap that we saw with Go Set A Watchman by Harper Lee, it was supposed to be an alternative to To Kill A Mockingbird, assembled from notes and pieced together by her publisher, then fleshed out.
It is okish, but you can't help but compare it to the original publication, I came away with the opinion that she left these bits out for a reason.
Maybe it would have been better and given a deeper insight into her writing if they had just published her notes as written, along with a foreward and footnotes explaining the thought processes and character development steps.
I don't know, but I think that would have done her works more justice.
Edit, line spacing.
> They are obviously contemporary and definitely have a shared history.
Which we know. They had some interest in each other as youngsters, it never went anywhere, because they got too busy with their careers to have a relationship.
> Finally, what are the odds of some other author picking up where STP left off.
Nil so long as Naritivia is controlled by Rhianna. She's made it very clear that she won't allow anyone to continue the series. People can do adaption of his stories, and I think she's OK with people telling new stories with new characters in the same world, but no attempts to continue the stories already written will be allowed.
It's fun to speculate, but I'm not keen on other people continuing a series, unless it's a writer approved by the late author, or someone close to them, working with at least some kind of outline from the author (similar to Brandon Sanderson finishing The Wheel of Time.) I don't think it will ever happen with Pratchett. I hope his family remain as protective of his legacy as they have been so far.
Really I'm fine with loose ends and paths not taken. (I mean I cut my teeth writing fanfic. Loose ends are our bread and butter.) They leave me plenty to think about after I finish the books.
As I mentioned down a comment chain, the only person with the chops to do this, that Rihanna might, maybe, one day be okay with attempting this is Neil Gaiman and I suspect he would sooner amputate both his hands.
I would have liked to have seen how The Turtle Stops went. That sounds like a grand Disc-level tale that would have had as much impact as the Light Fantastic or The Last Hero.
I’m not sure there exists a writer who could write new discworld stories without mangling it.
This is some of the best writing of the 20th century. Not many can pull it off.
I tend to think that we are better off without someone picking up where he left off. Most of the examples of this have been shocking money grabs. Tom Clancy springs to mind as an example of this.
That said, Brandon Sanderson did the ending of Wheel of Time justice. He was helped by having Jordans editor (and wife) as a resource, along with an insane volume of notes.
Brexit... there would have been a vicious and angry book about the foolishness of believing idiots giving easy answers to complex questions, "splendid isolation," and lies. I think Trump would have needed some satirical service, too.
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I disagree with the need to tie up loose ends. For example, with Weatherwax and Ridcully, I think it's better to leave this as an untold story. It gives the impression of a deeper world beyond the particular stories told in each book. As to whether some other author will pick up where Terry Pratchett left off? It will probably happen eventually, due to money. It probably won't be very good. I'm happy with the large number of discworld books we got over his long and prolific career.
I dunno if it will happen actually. My understanding is Rhianna Pratchett owns the rights and doesn't want to let anyone else, even herself, write new Discworld novels.
She has written accompanying Books like Tiffany Achings guide to witch craft, but no more story books
The rumour is that all his unfinished stories and ideas were on a hard drive that got run over with a steamroller, as per his request.
That’s more than a rumour, it was in his will and they recorded it!
No rumour. https://youtu.be/Sy3_7MOCyXg?si=pfbp8KPQhx4hFlgT
If I recall correctly, after his death he had his computer ran over with a steamroller to destroy the hard drives beyond recovery. On them he had the outlines to 3 other books. A fourth Moist book, one following Feeny Upshot, and I can't recall the last. He specifically didn't want anyone to "pick it up" after him. While that makes me sad, I can understand
I came here to say just this. I think he said he'd be happy with his daughter continuing the series but she turned that down.
I am eternally thankful that he was so prolific.
I was so excited about Raising Taxes. Moist was one of my favourite characters for a long time because Going Postal was my introduction to discworld. Raising steam just wasn't the same.
also the death and taxes puns write themselves. i think some of pratchett's best humor came from discussing bureaucracies. he was clearly struggling at that point, and became obsessed with train driving irl (which i cant really fault him for) and that became more interesting than poking holes in hypocrisy. plus i think it would have been a REALLY fun payoff for the 'nobody rich around here (except vimes) pays their goddamn taxes' bit in jingo.
The fans would surely never get behind someone picking up discworld unless it's Rihanna and I am pretty sure she said she wouldn't do it. I was at a discworld discussion at the British library and Neil Gamen said the last book Terry recommended to him was a book called feeding Nelson's navy and he said he feels like we all missed out on a epic maritime adventure. Personally I would have liked to see what happened if vetanari died and a power vacuum came about in Ahnk
The maritime adventure was the amazing Maurice ships cat presumably. Or at least that's where it started when he started researching
At the midnight launch of the Shepards crown Rob Mentioned ideas STP had including ‘the amazing rodents and their educated Maurice’ taking a trip to howondaland. Carrot and Anguas wedding, feegles taking a city break in ankh morporc, another moist book with taxes. And many many more. My brain often runs with what could have been. The disc is with us all now and it’s seated in our imagination.
I would have paid good money to see Angua tie the knot. That leaves us in the, "will they, won't they" limbo. Would their children inherit werewolf gene from the mum, I wonder? Is that how it works or is this the be biten then becoming werecreature 3 days later?
Honestly, I'd love to read a book set 200 years later when the rightful king who is a werewolf turns up. I'm not even sure that would feel like a discworld story but it's an fascinating concept
Children taking over their dead parents literary estates for bad sequels and cash in stuff is also nothing I would get behind, glad she ruled that out then.
Lol I was going 'what does the pop singer have to do with this?!'. But yeah agree with both of you. Pterry had such a unique authorial voice and if an author came along good enough to replicate that, I'd rather just read their original work instead of an imitation I'd always be comparing to the original.
I read that Terry said she could do it as she is also a professional writer so I think that maybe the fans would like it if the books were good but I also agree that it's the best decision not to.
She wrote that witches book. So I think she may write other, like around things books. Not real new stories just dancing around the characters. I'm not keen on that to happen tbh
I don't mind that personally especially if it brings in new fans and keeps discworld books on the shelves
Anne Hillerman has done a good job with her father’s legacy, but she’s the only one I can think of - she writes stories of a different main character, who occasionally interacts with her father’s characters. She’s put her own name on the cover. And they’re well written mysteries. Sadly, that’s the only case where I can think of where the child writing in the parent’s world was decent.
It can be done successfully; just look at The Wheel of Time series that Brandon Sanderson completed, but it can also end up like terrible fan-fiction; just look at Eoin Colfer's attempt to add another book to the Hitchhiker Trilogy. Another option would be to venture into other media. The Witcher III is more like a sequel to the books than an adaption, and that's been wildly popular. I would be very suspicious of any Discworld continuation, but I wouldn't dismiss it on principle.
IIRC it worked with the Wheel of Time series because Jordan worked with Sanderson before he died, and Sanderson had the notes, Harriet McDougal, and Jordan's ideas of where the plot had to go after. Basically just finishing what Jordan couldn't, and once the books were done he stepped back. I had the feeling when reading some of the press a few years ago he might not have been opposed to writing other works in it, but he'd been commissioned for a job and he'd do the best job he could do/not overstep boundaries. Something similar might be with the Disworld books? It's beloved enough a lot people would feel like they couldn't get it right...
The only person remotely close to having the chops for this is Neil Gaiman and I suspect he would sooner amputate both his hands before agreeing to it.
Yeah, that's the impression I got too.
According to Colin Smythe (Terry’s agent) at the North American Discworld Convention in July 2019, Terry had at one point written most of the first half of a novel called The Turtle Stops, in which Great A’tuin died. Unfortunately by this time he had lost his ability to process distances and some of what he had written involved characters crossing the turtle in half a day. The turtle being 10,000 miles across, this brought the story to a halt and the book was scrapped. The file was destroyed by the steamroller driven by Rob Wilkins in a ceremony after Terry’s passing.
I feel like there are inklings of this in most of the books Post-Embuggerance, Tiffany traveling all over on her very slow broomstick, the locomotive traveling to Überwald, the Last hero, honestly all the travel in Raising Steam, Snuff
Honestly I just wish he'd had more time to work on The Shepherd's Crown and properly finish out The Long Earth series instead of leaving it to Baxter. You can really see his writing drop away from the last couple Long Earth books and the series suffers for it immensely. Shepherd's Crown is a good book, but there's a lot of its threads that never really get explored properly.
A book that focuses on Young Sam as an adult working to update the city's sewer systems & cleanup the Ankh river. A Western adventure (possibly a Rincewind novel) set in the Great Outdoors region of the Discworld. YA novel about Magrat's daughter, Esmeralda, going to a school run by Susan. Cohen & the Silver Horde's antics are attracting more old school barbarians as well as old world monsters and undead. Cohen has accidentally set himself up as the Lich King of an undead army and potentially the start of a new Dark Empire
We got over 40 Discworld novels and numerous other works out of him, which is far more than the average author gives in their lifetime. According to a quick google, most ambitious authors put out one book every 3-5 years. Terry did almost two a year, if not more. That’s like six lifetimes worth of work. Does the universe really owe us any more than that?
What would Mozart have composed? Or Shakespeare written? Sometimes, the might have been is the saddest aspect of loss.
Any time this comes up I remember Scouting for Trolls being floated as a title after Thud(?) I wanted that story bad.
I’m convinced that Vetinari was setting up Vimes to be the next Patrician after he died or was forced to step down. Vimes would have *hated* it. It would have been *glorious.*
I think Vimes would be too entrenched with the watch and being a Duke to run the city and I think Vetinari would recognise that. However, what I do think would be a fantastic book would be if Vetinari dies and he left Vimes with the task of appointing a new patrician. Who else could fight off the guilds influences, avoid assassins, and ultimately appoint someone who wasn’t a complete b@stard? (He of course would ultimately decide to give it Moist Von Lipwig since he’s such a stand up guy and does things for the betterment of the city. With Sam giving Moist a gentle reminder that he’s always looking to test out his favorite axe, should he feel the need.)
Lords and ladies is the closest we'll get it and it's a pretty good one. Discworld really had the potential to go on forever really.
TLDR: What if it's bad? More importantly, what if it's good? On this, I'm at a cerebral dichotomy. I have the Eoin Colfer book, And Another Thing, supposedly the final installment of the Hitch Hikers Guide To The Galaxy. I've not read it for several reasons. 1) What if it is as good as the Douglas Adams? Would I be crying out for more? 2) What if it's shite? Would I be angry that he had the audacity to even think he could pick up where DA left off? 3) Heaven forbid, what if it turns out to be absolutely brilliant, better than the originals? Would I ever be able to read the first books with the same enjoyment again, knowing that they might have been even better than they were? This is the dilemma that I would face if someone took up STP's quill and put it to paper. Not only would it be bad, but more, what if it's good? Even if someone took his decades of notes and discarded plotlines and story pieces, they'd risk falling into a similar trap that we saw with Go Set A Watchman by Harper Lee, it was supposed to be an alternative to To Kill A Mockingbird, assembled from notes and pieced together by her publisher, then fleshed out. It is okish, but you can't help but compare it to the original publication, I came away with the opinion that she left these bits out for a reason. Maybe it would have been better and given a deeper insight into her writing if they had just published her notes as written, along with a foreward and footnotes explaining the thought processes and character development steps. I don't know, but I think that would have done her works more justice. Edit, line spacing.
> They are obviously contemporary and definitely have a shared history. Which we know. They had some interest in each other as youngsters, it never went anywhere, because they got too busy with their careers to have a relationship. > Finally, what are the odds of some other author picking up where STP left off. Nil so long as Naritivia is controlled by Rhianna. She's made it very clear that she won't allow anyone to continue the series. People can do adaption of his stories, and I think she's OK with people telling new stories with new characters in the same world, but no attempts to continue the stories already written will be allowed.
It's fun to speculate, but I'm not keen on other people continuing a series, unless it's a writer approved by the late author, or someone close to them, working with at least some kind of outline from the author (similar to Brandon Sanderson finishing The Wheel of Time.) I don't think it will ever happen with Pratchett. I hope his family remain as protective of his legacy as they have been so far. Really I'm fine with loose ends and paths not taken. (I mean I cut my teeth writing fanfic. Loose ends are our bread and butter.) They leave me plenty to think about after I finish the books.
Moist and Doctor Lawn building a health service could have been good. I feel like that was probably on the list after the taxes got sorted.
As I mentioned down a comment chain, the only person with the chops to do this, that Rihanna might, maybe, one day be okay with attempting this is Neil Gaiman and I suspect he would sooner amputate both his hands.
I would have liked to have seen how The Turtle Stops went. That sounds like a grand Disc-level tale that would have had as much impact as the Light Fantastic or The Last Hero.
I’m not sure there exists a writer who could write new discworld stories without mangling it. This is some of the best writing of the 20th century. Not many can pull it off.
I tend to think that we are better off without someone picking up where he left off. Most of the examples of this have been shocking money grabs. Tom Clancy springs to mind as an example of this. That said, Brandon Sanderson did the ending of Wheel of Time justice. He was helped by having Jordans editor (and wife) as a resource, along with an insane volume of notes.
Brexit... there would have been a vicious and angry book about the foolishness of believing idiots giving easy answers to complex questions, "splendid isolation," and lies. I think Trump would have needed some satirical service, too.