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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?
(Score: 5, Interesting) by GreatAuntAnesthesia on Friday September 08 2017, @09:52PM (12 children)
I believe Tolkien never wanted LotR to be filmed. He thought the medium could never do the creatures and scenery of middle earth justice. While there are aspects of Peter Jackson's interpretation that I disagree with, on the whole I think it's excellent, and I really do think that Tolkien might have reconsidered had he seen the end result. He died well before anyone even imagined what modern technology has now made possible.
(Score: 2) by darnkitten on Friday September 08 2017, @11:59PM
He probably would have insisted on the Tom Bombadil scenes...
(Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 09 2017, @01:47AM
Jeter Packson is a Tajor League Mwat.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by dry on Saturday September 09 2017, @02:22AM (4 children)
I think there's a few changes that Jackson made that would have really pissed off Tolkien. Farimir (sp?) for example.
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Saturday September 09 2017, @02:32AM (2 children)
What did he change about Faramir? I read LotR, but it was a *very* long time ago.
(Score: 3, Informative) by dry on Saturday September 09 2017, @04:04AM (1 child)
He totally changed his personality. In the book, he was basically the opposite of Boromir (sp?), helped Frodo after figuring out that he carried the ring, let Gollum go after catching him, the disappointing son to Denother, partially due to hanging out with Gandalf. In the movie, he captured Frodo and tried to take him to his father.
It has been a while since I read it so might not be remembering clearly, but the change really stood out.
Quickly duckduckgoing, I found this quote,
http://www.istad.org/tolkien/faramir.html [istad.org]
(Score: 3, Interesting) by canopic jug on Saturday September 09 2017, @11:22AM
Boromir had a lot of noble qualities but though you can't quite call him weaker he was more suceptible to the unseen forces, especially the malevolent forces, and less his own man than Faramir.
That was shown a little they departed Rivendal, but there it could be debated either way. He obviously had struggles over the ring even early on, but won after some effort. However, once the group got to the the west door of Moria, he chucked that rock into the water inadvertently signalling the watcher. The good forces balanced that one out because the watcher hppened to be far away at that moment, giving the group enough time to work through the riddle. After I'd read the series through all the way, that action stood out a lot more than it did at first glance.
Money is not free speech. Elections should not be auctions.
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Saturday September 09 2017, @02:31PM
The trip through the "death cave". In the book, he went in alone, came out with white hair and little was said about what happened inside.
Carbon, The only element in the known universe to ever gain sentience
(Score: 2) by looorg on Saturday September 09 2017, @04:01AM
Still by dying he did set the stage for a book written in DEATH-form.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 09 2017, @04:58AM (2 children)
LoR is one of those rare cases where the movie is better than the book.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 09 2017, @01:07PM (1 child)
Do you not like to read? Do you love sitting on your butt in front of a screen?
The LotR films were indeed incredible and beautiful, but by sheer necessity, they are mere summaries of the books. The movies are enhanced by one's knowledge of the books, and the movies alone are quite lacking on their own.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 09 2017, @04:13PM
All my reading is done on a laptop (different AC).
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 10 2017, @03:30PM
I found the LotR book slow going. I enjoyed most of the Peter Jackson LotR movies. And the first two of the Hobbit movies. The last Hobbit movie "The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies" wasn't good though.
In an alternative universe where Tolkien and wiki tech was alive, I might be tempted to pay for access to a LotR universe wiki written and edited by Tolkien and his assistants :).
(Score: 2) by isj on Friday September 08 2017, @09:52PM (8 children)
Now, all they have to do is resist the no-doubt-considerable monetary lure of officially-licensed Terry Pratchett's Discworld (TM) novels.
What do you mean by that?
If you're referring to the three movies (The Hogfather, The Colour of Magic, and Going Postal) I think those adaptation were fine. Reasonably close to the books while leaving out the cruft.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by choose another one on Friday September 08 2017, @10:23PM
> What do you mean by that?
Licensing other authors to write "official" discworld novels, using same characters and settings - at least that is how I understood it.
And yes it would probably be both lucrative and very likely to turn out badly.
(Score: 2) by looorg on Friday September 08 2017, @10:23PM (2 children)
Considering Terry had minor roles in all of them he probably didn't mind. Nigel Planer had roles to in all but Postal as I recall it. Planer reads the uk audiobooks for Terry.
It's to bad they have not made more after those 3. I really liked them, especially Hogfather.
(Score: 2) by wonkey_monkey on Friday September 08 2017, @10:59PM (1 child)
I believe he was rather reticent about Hogfather being filmed, but once he saw it he was won over and that's why it was followed up with The Colour of Magic and Going Postal.
Long before that, there were animated versions of Soul Music and Wyrd Sisters.
There have also been audio adaptations of, if I remember correctly, Mort and at least one of the Watch novels, and at least one of his non-Discworld stories.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk
(Score: 4, Interesting) by bob_super on Friday September 08 2017, @11:07PM
Beyond the Disc, there is an upcoming adaptation of Good Omens [imdb.com]
David Tennant as Crowley ... looking forward to that!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 08 2017, @11:04PM
The animated movies where better though and more flexible, I always hoped they would make a witches abroad, or guards guards animated but I guess that is never to be
(Score: 2) by darnkitten on Friday September 08 2017, @11:21PM (2 children)
I'm referring to the increasingly common practice of the author's estate licensing out the author's settings and characters to other writers; e.g., the recent Robert Parker's Jesse Stone, Spenser, and Virgil Cole novels; or Tom Clancy's Ryanverse series, which is on its second or third author...
(Score: 2) by t-3 on Sunday September 24 2017, @01:01PM (1 child)
I very much doubt any Tom Clancy novel could be made /worse/ by having a different author...
(Score: 2) by darnkitten on Tuesday September 26 2017, @06:00PM
Oh, come now--I am sure there are some people who actually enjoy interminable descriptions of military hardware, with occasional bits of potboiler thrown in for seasoning. :)
In fact, though, I have a patron who now buys the ghostwritten Clancy novels for the library, which may indicate, at least in his eyes, that they are better than the originals.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 08 2017, @09:58PM (9 children)
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.
(Score: 2) by chromas on Friday September 08 2017, @10:15PM (2 children)
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)
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
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)
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
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)
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
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.
Carbon, The only element in the known universe to ever gain sentience
(Score: 4, Insightful) by theluggage on Saturday September 09 2017, @01:22PM (1 child)
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
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...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 08 2017, @10:00PM (5 children)
Brandon Sanderson's Wheel of Time books are better than Robert Jordan's.
I like the Tolkien "lost tales" and other curated releases because they are presented as unfinished work, so you can appreciate them for what they are.
My least favorite, coming from what would eventually be considered the YA genre, are the Oz books by Ruth Plumly Thompson, which have all the literary value of the Barnum and Bailey circus and are barely a shadow of the ones by L. Frank Baum.
(Score: 2) by Snow on Friday September 08 2017, @10:04PM (1 child)
On average, yes, but I think that the first book is the best of the series.
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Friday September 08 2017, @10:15PM
Lampooned in Achille Talon [wikipedia.org], ep38, where a whole page is dedicated to book critics, including one particular critic declaring none of the books as the best in the series.
(Score: 2) by darnkitten on Friday September 08 2017, @11:54PM
I read the Ruth Plumly Thompson Oz books, but only really remember Tik Tok and the Shaggy Man vs. the Wheelers.
We love you...in soup!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 09 2017, @01:51AM (1 child)
That guy has no balls.
(Score: 1) by Demena on Saturday September 09 2017, @08:41AM
Must be the hero of a jack chalked novelthen
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 08 2017, @11:00PM (1 child)
The stories of how they determined the sex of the turtle
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 09 2017, @07:23AM
The turtle is female. That is well-established in "The light fantastic", since she travels to see her young hatch from previously laid eggs. Well, the direct interpretation is that she has laid the eggs, I guess if you want to be nasty about it you could start arguing.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 08 2017, @11:12PM (1 child)
His *Fuzzy Bones* was a better third novel in the Fuzzy series than was H. Beam Piper's own (eventually discovered) *Fuzzies and Other People*
(Score: 4, Interesting) by darnkitten on Friday September 08 2017, @11:50PM
I also enjoyed Fuzzy Bones, as well as Ardath Mayhar's Golden Dreams: A Fuzzy Odyssey, as they attempted to extrapolate Fuzzy history and culture from the scant information Piper provided.
Once Fuzzies and Other People was published, though, it became clear that they were incompatible with Piper's concept of the Fuzzies. I still enjoy them as an "alternate world," of which I think Piper would have approved.
I haven't yet read the new Fuzzy sequels, but did not enjoy Scalzi's "reboot."
-
Also, I just looked on Wikipedia, and MiGahds!!--there are a crapload of Piper sequels out there! I wasn't impressed with the first two Lord Kalvin ones when I read them, but wasn't aware of any of the rest.
(Score: 2) by Hawkwind on Saturday September 09 2017, @01:00AM
OK, Ian Colfer cracks me up. The only posthumous book I can think of that I liked was his Hitchhiker's book. I laughed, and then I didn't cry.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 09 2017, @01:29AM (4 children)
No, its lost forever. Its insanity to destroy things.
(Score: 2) by Bot on Saturday September 09 2017, @05:53AM (2 children)
> Its insanity to destroy things.
This big red button vaporizes NK and all its military assets around the world, ensuring no retaliation with 100 percent probability. And suppose you are american. Are you insane if you press it?
Account abandoned.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 09 2017, @11:32AM (1 child)
Yes. To be specific, if you press it you're a sociopathic genocidal mass murderer. There are 25 million people living in NK. That's not even Holocaust numbers, that's Stalin numbers.
(Score: 1) by ants_in_pants on Monday September 11 2017, @05:44PM
20 Million is the highest number that's seriously considered by historians, and that entirely depends on what you attribute to famine and what you attribute to malice.
Just thought I'd let you know, it's bad form to overstate the magnitude of a genocide.
-Love, ants_in_pants
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 09 2017, @01:14PM
Ownership of a thing requires control, and control includes the possibility of destruction. The owner of the ideas dictated that as part of his control over his own ideas that the unpublished ideas preserved in his computer hard drive be destroyed.
Do you question the ownership of the drive and ideas involved here?
(Score: 5, Informative) by rigrig on Saturday September 09 2017, @01:40AM (1 child)
To me this felt like a very Pratchett Thing to do, and reminded me of this quote:
Re
I think that even if this wasn't about respecting his wishes, his daughter is smart enough to realize that
a) the real money is in live-action adaptations anyway, and
b) PTerry was a pretty brilliant and unique writer, and right now Discworld novels are known for being the great mix of satire and humor they are, which is not a brand identity you want to dilute by publishing a few sub-par "official" books in the same series.
Also: If you're not scared of text-based games, have a look at the Discworld MUD [starturtle.net]. (It's completely run by volunteers who don't even accept any donations, which is why since PTerry heard of it he has been denying any knowledge of it.)
No one remembers the singer.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 09 2017, @10:24AM
He is fine with the Discworld MUD as it does not generate revenue or affect his work. I played it for years before meeting him at a book signing. He denied all knowledge of it :)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 09 2017, @05:32AM (5 children)
I think opening the hard drive and then scratching the platters would have worked a lot better.
I'm under the impression that just using a steam roller would simply not destroy the data (as long as the recoverer is rich enough).
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 09 2017, @09:29AM
You might have missed that in reading the summary, but after the steam roller, the squished remains were apparently put through a rock crusher. They're gonna need someone who is VERY good at puzzles if they want to recover anything outta that :p
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 09 2017, @10:34AM (2 children)
The summary says the steam roller wasn't enough, so they used a rock crusher. :-) Some drives (especially the ones for laptops) have glass or ceramic platters, which can be shattered just by dropping the drive.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 09 2017, @11:37AM (1 child)
> Some drives (especially the ones for laptops) have glass or ceramic platters, which can be shattered just by dropping the drive.
I have this revolutionary idea: laptop components should be more resistant to drop damage.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 09 2017, @12:04PM
You don't seem to understand the relationships between hardness, toughness and brittleness. As long as the rest of the laptop acts as a crumple zone, the more rigid (and hence brittle) the drive the more likely it is for your data to survive an impact. A drive which shatters at 500G is better than one that sublty distorts to the point of being unreadable at 300G but doesn't break until 1000G.
(Score: 2) by theluggage on Saturday September 09 2017, @01:32PM
As would reformatting the drive a few times with the "secure erase" flag set, or shipping it to a reputable commercial secure disposal outfit... but that probably wouldn't have made international news, informed the world that Pratchett didn't want his unfinished works published, or plugged the exhibition in Somerset.
Especially since they took the trouble to use a real steamroller.
(Score: 2) by theluggage on Saturday September 09 2017, @01:55PM
I thought Stephen Baxter's sequel to The Time Machine nailed it - partly because Baxter succeeded in segueing the original HGW story into the sort of hard-SF odyssey that was his own field of expertise. Haven't tried his War of the Worlds sequel yet, but doesn't sound like it is in the same league.
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Saturday September 09 2017, @04:29PM
I actually thought many of the Ruth Plumly Thompson Oz novels were better than many of the works in the original series.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 2) by Rich on Saturday September 09 2017, @04:42PM
Having 10 unfinished works of one's main income source on a single hard drive and not having a backup of those on some USB stick seems rather courageous to me. Was Pratchett that daring?
(Score: 2) by deimtee on Saturday September 09 2017, @06:38PM
Suposedly there were four lensmen stories written after he died. I have only ever seen one of them. Judging by that one the others were justifiably erased from history by wise time-travellers from the future. I can only assume that the time-travellers are not perfect, or they would have got all four.
No problem is insoluble, but at Ksp = 2.943×10−25 Mercury Sulphide comes close.
(Score: 3, Informative) by ledow on Saturday September 09 2017, @06:47PM (1 child)
Tolkien's history series was interesting, but because it had nothing to do with the books and is totally "unfilmable". They weren't pushing it out to get eyes, they were pushing it out to show all the stuff left unfinished (which was a shed-load). And his son spent his life doing that and I don't imagine it ever sold enough to live on.
Outside of that, the only one that come close for me was Night of the Triffids, which seemed to put up the right style and continue with it in a not-stupendous manner. It wasn't utterly fantastic, but it was good enough to forget that it wasn't the original author.
Everything else? Tripe and money-grabbing. Hell, I don't even buy sequels if they are just rubbish. Who cares if they have the franchise name on, and you absolutely adored the first book/movie? Just buy up to the point you like them, and then stop and forget the rest ever existed. I've done it for any number of things (ironically, Pratchett is one - the later Discworlds are just story books and he lost the pizzazz, but that's hardly his fault, but I swear I can see the point where his illness started to take effect in his writing).
The problem is that people STILL KEEP BUYING THEM. Stop it. The latest movie in a series is shit? Stop watching it (give the first movie a try, sure, but then don't buy it on DVD or go see the further sequels). Or literally wait until it's so cheap they make no money from it or it's showing on Amazon Prime or something. Because every penny you give them is a pat on the back of "Good job, we want more, do that again". Make them learn, and reinvent it, or try another tack, or give up entirely. By NOT GIVING THEM MONEY.
Still haven't even properly watched anything Aliens past Alien 3, and I love Aliens. Alien Resurrection was just the point where I went "Oh, god, they've lost it". The vs Predator shite was the start and it's been downhill from there.
(Score: 3, Informative) by ledow on Saturday September 09 2017, @06:52PM
And I'm reminded of the Richard Bachman novels.
Stephen King writes books under a pen-name, nobody buys them.
It's revealed to be Stephen King, suddenly they all sell.
(Score: 2) by JeanCroix on Monday September 11 2017, @06:48PM