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posted by Fnord666 on Friday September 08 2017, @09:36PM   Printer-friendly
from the fighting-the-writing-dead dept.

In a rare moment of sanity in the literary world, the manager of the late Sir Terry Pratchett's estate has followed the beloved author's wishes and destroyed the hard drive of the computer containing his unfinished works by crushing it with a steamroller. As many as ten unfinished works were on the drive, which, after being unsuccessfully steamrolled several times, was finally securely destroyed by being put through a rock crusher.

The pieces will be displayed at the Salisbury Museum as part of a Pratchett exhibition.

While I do, personally and professionally, mourn the loss of Sir Terry's remaining work; as a librarian navigating a publishing world increasingly dominated by the likes of James Patterson's literary mill, I applaud the Pratchett estate's willingness to defend him from a legacy of eternal "new releases" based on random back-of-a-napkin jottings and used-bubble-gum-wrapper sketches, as seems to be the industry norm these days.

Now, all they have to do is resist the no-doubt-considerable monetary lure of officially-licensed Terry Pratchett's Discworld (TM) novels.

That being said, what posthumous releases or ghostwritten literary sequels have you read and enjoyed? Also, do you consider any of those be considered worthy sequels or additions to the originals?


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  • (Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 08 2017, @09:58PM (9 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 08 2017, @09:58PM (#565343)

    Sure, let's celebrate the destruction of culture just because it was the guy's wishes.

    No, this should be the impetus to develop a scanner that can reconstruct the data from a few feet away and through a glass case.

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  • (Score: 2) by chromas on Friday September 08 2017, @10:15PM (2 children)

    by chromas (34) Subscriber Badge on Friday September 08 2017, @10:15PM (#565351) Journal

    It's not really culture if it's unpublished. (roll_safe.jpg)

    • (Score: 3, Insightful) by Bot on Saturday September 09 2017, @05:44AM (1 child)

      by Bot (3902) on Saturday September 09 2017, @05:44AM (#565510) Journal

      it is not really culture if it is published either.

      BTW culture meant something different than artistic production and social commentary.

      Culture is the system in which one grows. It is the way your grandpa took off the hat to greet a lady.

      Calling culture whatever stuff is put in the public consumption cauldron that does not look as immediately utilitarian is a sign culture has been defeated by mass media. There are both good and bad aspects to this, but the shift must be acknowledged. If it is not, something is quite wrong.

      --
      Account abandoned.
      • (Score: 2, Touché) by Demena on Saturday September 09 2017, @08:20AM

        by Demena (5637) on Saturday September 09 2017, @08:20AM (#565544)

        Oh, the irony. Don't you realize that you are doing precisely thus by narrowing the definition and meanings of 'culture'?

  • (Score: 2) by darnkitten on Friday September 08 2017, @11:24PM (5 children)

    by darnkitten (1912) on Friday September 08 2017, @11:24PM (#565384)

    One of the articles I read noted that the crushed hard drive seemed to be surprisingly antiquated, suggesting that "they" had spirited away the original for later resurrection...

    • (Score: 3, Informative) by dry on Saturday September 09 2017, @02:28AM

      by dry (223) on Saturday September 09 2017, @02:28AM (#565462) Journal

      The pictures that I saw was of a PATA hard drive.

    • (Score: 5, Informative) by Immerman on Saturday September 09 2017, @03:29AM (1 child)

      by Immerman (3985) on Saturday September 09 2017, @03:29AM (#565486)

      Possibly. Or perhaps he was just attached to an old computer for writing - I understand some authors can get quite attached to specific hardware and software. Just can't get into the writing "zone" if the keyboard doesn't click just right, or a particular writing feature they've become accustomed to has been changed or removed. I mean writing a manuscript doesn't really get any benefit from modern word processing anyway, and if you find authoring software that suits your Muse, why would you change it? I seem to recall one author (Piers Anthony maybe?) writing that he used a CP/M based authoring program well into the Windows era, possibly until the hardware itself gave out and provided strong incentive to find some new tools that would run on modern hardware.

      • (Score: 2) by mcgrew on Saturday September 09 2017, @02:36PM

        by mcgrew (701) <publish@mcgrewbooks.com> on Saturday September 09 2017, @02:36PM (#565661) Homepage Journal

        I had the world's fastest IBM XT in the early '90s. I'd replaced everything inside the case except the power supply. It was a 386 by then, with a 40 mb drive and high density floppies.

        --
        mcgrewbooks.com mcgrew.info nooze.org
    • (Score: 4, Insightful) by theluggage on Saturday September 09 2017, @01:22PM (1 child)

      by theluggage (1797) on Saturday September 09 2017, @01:22PM (#565630)

      suggesting that "they" had spirited away the original for later resurrection...

      Terry Pratchett (mayherestinpeace) was a smart guy. If he'd just put in his will "my unfinished works are not to be published" then we'd never have heard about it and the lawyers could probably have worked around it. Now, it's all over the news that his unfinished works have been crushed by a steamroller. Even if all copies haven't actually been destroyed, they've officially been destroyed, so the author of any "new authorised Discworld(r)(tm) Novel based on unpublished work by Terry Pratchett himself" is going to have some explaining to do.

         

      • (Score: 2) by darnkitten on Tuesday September 26 2017, @06:21PM

        by darnkitten (1912) on Tuesday September 26 2017, @06:21PM (#573344)

        If he'd just put in his will "my unfinished works are not to be published" then we'd never have heard about it and the lawyers could probably have worked around it

        Indeed. P.L. Traver's will specified that no film adaptations of her Mary Poppins stories were to be made after her death, but Disney is doing one anyway...