The L-Space Web: Interviews

Terry Pratchett - Going By The Book

His Discworld novels have had readers in stitches for decades by poking fun at the Dungeons & Dragons genre. But now that the best-selling books are set to become a graphic adventure for the PC, the author's making sure their humour survives the transition intact.

BY GARY WHITTA

''I'm a right bastard to work with'' - Terry Pratchett

TERRY PRATCHETT is 45, sports a beard, has little hair (which is maybe why he wears a black broad-brimmed hat in public) and, since returning from a recent science fiction convention in San Francisco, carries a heavily-loaded sued saddlebag over his shoulder wherever he goes. He doesn't look like someone who's written around 20 best-selling books over the last 15 years and is universally regarded as the funniest, most inventive fantasy writer in the world today. Nor does he look like one of Britain's 500 wealthiest individuals, worth an estimated 27.5 million GBP. In fact, he looks (as our Art Editor commented when she first saw a photo of the man) like a little wizard.

Maybe thats all for the best. Although he occasionally dips into the world of more conventional fantasy he's still best known for his ever growing series of novels (15 to date, with one on its way) based on Discworld, Pratchett's very own mythological milieu, which celebrates it's tenth birthday this month.

Discworld is a place where anything. no matter how bizzare, isn't just possible but highly probable. The world itself (if you can get your head round this) is a pizza-shaped planet which rests on the back of four giant elephants, who in turn stand on the shell of a ten thousand mile long turtle that plods inexorably through space.

Pratchett's books stick two fingers up at conventional fantasy fiction by committing the cardinal sin of not taking themselves seriously. As a result they are very funny indeed. It's a unique approach that Terry Pratchett has made his own - primarily because, although many have tried, nobody can do it quite like him. This is a world where the Grim Reaper, after a hectic day ushering souls into the next world, pops out for a curry. A world where the Librarian of the magical Unseen University is an arm wrestling orangutan. A world in which the most frightening creature is not a dragon or an orc warlord, but a piece of travelling luggage on hundreds of little legs, capable of flattening anything anything that gets in its way...

Despite the books' phenomenal success (they've been translated into 18 languages and back catalogue titles still sell over 100,000 copies a month), Pratchett has always shied away from traditional merchandising deals. His Truckers books for kids were recently adapted for television, a small craft company produces jolly little clay figurines of Discworld's main characters, and there's been the odd spin-off comic book, but little else.

Until now, that is. Plans are already in motion for all kinds of The Discworld Mapp, a concept album and, most interestingly of all, a PC adventure game. It'll be the first official title since The Colour Of Magic, Delta 4's Spectrum adventure of the mid-'80s and Pratchett, ever protective of his vision, is keeping a close eye on it's development.

Today, however, the man is not at home writing his latest, as-yet-untitled Discworld book. He's not in Croydon, where the Discworld game is being developed, either. No he's in Bath, home of PC Gamer and his former employer The Bath Evening Chronicle, to talk about life, the universe and everything. Oh, and to buy himself a new leather jacket, one that looks like, as he describes, ``something that pigs have been shitting on for ten years.'' But seeing as it's late-night closing, there's still plenty of time beforehand for photos and a friendly chat over a cup of tea and biccies...

The Question you are probably asked most often is: ``Where did the idea for the Discworld come from?'' Do you have an answer?

No, I make up a new answer for every interview. I suppose the look of Discworld is pinched from ancient mythology. Something that looks very similar to Discworld turns up in a number of old myths. And that's about it, so far as the surface and what happens on it is concerned. It's just a place where I can write funny fantasy stories.

Around 1970-71, the kid who lived next door came round with his parents on Boxing Day and showed me this Dungeons & Dragons game. The whole thing was a bit more informal then it is now. And I thought, hey, if I'd been 12 when this came out, I'd have been lost. I'd have become a sad little person painting eyelashes on little figures... I could see there was an incredible attraction in it. But I did some game scenarios for him and some of those thing actually got incorporated into The Colour of Magic. One or two others even turned up later in the series. I quite enjoyed it. I was a pretty good Dungeon Master - providing people worked out what the plot was...

The things you can't help but notice about the Discworld books is how they poke fun at more conventional fantasy fiction. Do you think the genre takes itself to seriously?

Poking fun is probably going to far. You'll find all sorts of references to films, crime movies and all kinds of stuff -- whatever I think is a good idea at the time. Fantasy in the terms of classic post-Tolkien fantasy takes itself horribly seriously, and there's a lot of very bad fantasy, usually written by Americans. Many of these writers suffer from the American belief that Europe is full of quaint old buildings and people saying things like, ``Ho, a pint of your finest ale.'' And all this silliness about elves and fluffy unicorns... I can't be having with that. That definitely needs sending up. But the reason the Discworld books are successful is, I'm sure that there's a bit more to them than just the gags. You've got to have a plot that you can enjoy and characters you're going to be interested in. It's not enough just to string a load of gags together.

Did you honestly expect the series to run for as long as it has?

I didn't have the faintest idea. No-one did. The publishers, Corgi, were in two minds whoever to publish The Colour of Magic. Everyone liked it, but they didn't quite know where it fitted in.

But it started to sell very, very well -- there were two main specialist bookshops that had it at the top of their best-seller list for two years.

Has the series developed according to a plan or did it spiral away under it's own momentum?

No, not entirely under its own momentum. One of the strengths of the series is I bounce around between various types of book. Small Gods is quite heavy in places. It's probably got the fewest `yuk, yuk' laughs of any of the books, but I get some very interesting mail for it.

It's ten years of my life, so they're actually written by different people.

I'm a different person now to who I was when I wrote The Colour of Magic.

What kind of people read your books?

It's 50/50 male and female, which I think is surprising. I get letters from mothers like: ``We wondered what our Kevin was laughing about, so I read one of your books and now I'm your greatest fan.'' It sounds kind of crap to say it, but when I go on signing tours, whole families come in to have all their entire collections of Discworld books signed.

Do you have a favourite Discworld book?

It's always the one I'm working on now. I've got a soft spot for Guards! Guards! and Reaper Man, but it's like asking someone, ``Which one's your favourite kid?'' It doesn't work.

You had quite a comprehensive knowledge of computers and games before the Discworld project came along didn't you?

I feel so old. I remember the 1K ZX80, I really do. Luxury when I was a lad - Space Invaders played on the printer and all that. I started off in real life with a ZX81, soldering on extra memory and building speech boards. I used to enjoy playing a game called Mazogs, and another called Merchants of Venus.

Then Alan Sugar, God bless him came up with the Amstrad CPC464 and that stayed with me for a long time. I went from that to a PC in 1985, because it was the only thing that could offer me the kind of space I wanted. I've stayed with them ever since. These days, with SVGA and a good sound card, you can get good games. But I spent many years watching all those bastards with Amigas and Ataris having all the good stuff, while what we had were games like Pong.

What system do you have at home?

I've got two 33Mhz 486s. My old 386 is still lurking in the corner. I like to have two machines. What the hell, I make a lot of money. I don't want a little puff of smoke coming out of my machine one day so I have to stop work -- I make my living on it -- so I back up from one to another. It's a luxury, but not that much of a luxury.

Do you keep many games on your hard drive because you play them so much?

I don't actually keep many games permanently on hard drive. But I have got a fair number of games at home. I bring a couple with me whenever I come back from the states. I've flown my way through Wing Commander, X-wing and, well, most stuff I suppose.

Do you have any particular favorites?

I like Spear Of Destiny. There's something very nice, if you are basically a pacifist kind of guy, about kicking down a door and spraying a room with bullets in the privacy of your own home. My daughter goes for things like Monkey Island and the Sierra games.

Curiously enough, on the old Amstrad, I was quite into text-only adventures. There's one called Snowball from Level 9. That was superb because it had been written by guys who'd read science fiction. It was very cleverly done, and I spent weeks playing it. But I suppose now on the PC I've got into bad ways. In the words of the film Dark Star: ``Screw the intelligent life stuff. Just find me something I can bomb.''

Is there a Terry Pratchett top five?

Let me think, because I've played a lot of games of one sort or another over the years. The point is, is a game good because it grips you for a week or two? I can, if a game's really got me by the throat, sit there for a whole afternoon until my eyes are like furry boiled eggs. It's only when I've got to the end that I can stop playing the bloody thing and get on with some work.

What kind of game grips you like that?

Wing Commander. All the way -- because there's always something new. And Tetris. Not only did I wipe it off my hard disk, I threw it away and used Norton's Utilities to make sure I could never use it again. It's a computer virus which human beings can catch. But Wing Commander would definitely be in my top five along with Prince Of Persia. The way the kid runs 'n' jumps is so smooth.

Did you finish Prince Of Persia?

Yep. I got to the end of everything. I sit there, banging my head against the screen until I finish.

What did you think when you were first approached with the idea of the Discworld game? Weren't you a tiny bit apprehensive?

Oh, I was a bit suspicious. There was The Colour Of Magic on the Spectrum, which was actually pretty good, but this was in the days when you would buy a tape cassette with pictures of blazing robots and exploding planets, and when you played the game it was something were the graphics were just ASCII characters stuck together.

The Colour Of Magic came out just at the tail end of that period, when publishers thought all you had to do was have software and it would sell. They had the marketing skills of a wire coat-hanger. So when this came along I thought, ``Yes, I'm keen, I'm sure the game will be good, but I want a company with some kind of track record.''

So what made you agree to do this particular project with this particular company?

They kept pestering me really. They've actually been very patient, because I'm a right bastard to work with. I get very jealous over what happens to Discworld. But having spoken to them and been there and seen the stuff they've done...

You've got to understand that Discworld is not internally funny. It's not funny if you live there. It's funny to us because we're looking at it from the outside. It's the same humour as the bloke slipping on a banana skin. It's not funny to him, but it's funny to people watching. So I wanted the felling of it to be right. There will be a lot of involvement from me. I've seen enough to feel confident about going ahead.

If only they hadn't called themselves Teeny Weeny Games. I liked it when it was Perfect 10, Level 9 and Delta 4. Now I've got Teeny Weeny Games! Do me a favor.

How much involvement have you had so far?

Basically, I shout and threaten them quite a lot. They send me a lot of graphic material and I've seen lots of backgrounds and stuff like that. I've also seen the first draft of the plot. If there have been things I haven't liked, I've said ``No, you can't do that in the Discworld, but I can think of something else you can do that's appeared in the books, that would enable you to achieve the same effect.''

They really won me over by sending me a little animation sequence of Rincewind getting the luggage off the top of a wardrobe with a broom. The way the luggage walked and everything was nice, so I thought, ``Okay, they can do it well.''

Have you had any major disagreements so far?

Well, I said it should be called simply Discworld which is what it's going to be rather than The Trouble With Dragons or something like that. Apart from that, no. I think the art of negotiating is that no-one ever has to put their foot down and say ``No''. It's clear that TWG are familiar with the Discworld idea of things, so that even if they're inventing stuff - although I'm not letting them invent too much - it's a very logical extension of what does exist. I wouldn't allow a completely new Discworld narrative. Because it's mine.

Are you concerned about how the humor of your novels will be represented in the game?

I think it's got to be a game, more importantly. Thats one of the drawbacks of say, Wing Commander. The first time you play it, it's just fantastic, but by about the fourth or fifth time... A lot of stuff is only funny the first time round. I hope that Discworld will be a good playable game. I think it would be a mistake just to go for gags all the time.

From what you've seen so far, are you reasonably happy that the game will capture the spirit of your Discworld books?

Certainly the overall spirit of some of the books. Small Gods is a very different book to The Colour of Magic, and Wyrd Sisters is a different kind of book to Reaper Man. I think it captures the spirit of the Ankh-Morpork books, the ones set around the city. I've said no to an awful lot of people because I didn't think they were going to do it right, but I'm feeling quite happy about this deal.

What are the most important things for the game to convey in your opinion?

I'd like to see it require some intelligence on the part of the gamer. I want it so if they sit and think logically about a situation in a Discworld context, they'll think of the right things to do.

Have you had a good time with Teeny Weeny?

I think the good times are just beginning. A lot of the stuff at the start was the making certain that I was going to get involved. Now we're beginning to get down to the brass tacks of trying things out.

Adventure games are very often described as `interactive fiction', the idea being that the player is shaping the narrative in his role as the central character. Is that description justified?

I've always thought that idea a bit suspect, because there's a limit to what you can do. You only have a certain number of limited choices, and a number of these choices are going to bring you back into one particular thread. You can't really branch out into some huge decision tree. I'm not sure that the truly interactive game has yet been invented.

How do you see the computer game-playing medium evolving in the future?

Well, take Virtual Reality. I don't believe in it. The trouble with VR is that while your clonking around in your datagloves with your headset on, there's a billion buggers out there in the real world who are metaphorically going to be putting your car up on bricks and ripping the tyres off. I must confess that I don't see the future of gaming going to much further. Some things really do go as far as they can go, like the bicycle. You get to the point where all you can do with a bicycle is to find slightly different ways of producing it.

Is it getting more and more difficult to come up with new ideas for Discworld?

Nope. Seems unfair really, doesn't it? Even if I never had another Discworld idea, I've got three more books planned that I could write. Anyway, ideas aren't the important thing. People always ask me where I get my ideas from, but it's like saying ``Where do you get your potatoes from?'' The answer is the garden - so thats the important thing, not the potatoes. What you have to do is cultivate the kind of life and mind where ideas tend to crop up. I'm pleased to say that happens a lot.

I've got a character in the book I'm writing now called Foul Old Ron. He's a street person, and he's so smelly that his smell has actually evolved it's own personality. You know there are some people who can walk off - and the smell actually arrives before he does. It's not a schizophrenic thing. There actually is him and his smell. I hadn't thought that one up. It just turned up while I was writing.

The book's about Discworld rock'n'roll and what rock'n'roll really is... What it really is. Thats been incredible fun, and will be out in Spring. There may be another for the Autumn, but I'm not quite certain about that yet. I've also just finished the Mort Big Comic. I'm not really interested in the Discworld soap, towel and body-splash - thats taking it a bit too far - but there's a lot of Discworld stuff happening at the moment...

Discworld (the game) is due out Christmas 1994.

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