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Sunday, September 30, 2012
Saturday, September 29, 2012
Pratchett Leaves Discworld For London In 'Dodger'
From NPR : Pratchett Leaves Discworld For London In 'Dodger'
In 2011, NPR's Morning Edition interviewed fantasy author Terry Pratchett about becoming a legalized-suicide advocate in his native England, after his diagnosis with early-onset Alzheimer's. Asked about the increasingly grim turns in his best-selling Discworld novels (recent books have dealt with war, systemic slavery, demonic possession, and what it means to be human), Pratchett suggested that it wasn't illness but age that has made him cynical and prone to see the world more critically.
But that cynicism isn't apparent in his new young-adult novel Dodger, one of only a handful of Pratchett books that departs from his 39-volume Discworld series. His protagonists normally display bitter, hard-won humanism, and battle their own skepticism along with outside forces. But Dodger is sunnier and more upbeat. As Pratchett explores life in Victorian London, bringing in famous figures and lingering over unusual professions, it's hard to shake the notion that he's enjoying his excursion into historical drama too much to be all that hard on his characters.
The eponymous Dodger is a tough-minded, goodhearted 17-year-old orphan who knows every con and survival angle in London, including the importance of minding his own business. But he can't help interfering when he sees two men viciously beating a young woman. Leaving the victim in the care of passersby — Punch magazine co-founder Henry Mayhew and writer Charles Dickens, it happens — he aims his considerable resourcefulness at ferreting out her attackers, who turn out to have far-reaching political connections.
Solving the mystery of her background and the problem of her ongoing safety brings him into contact with characters both real and fictional — everyone from Benjamin Disraeli to Sweeney Todd. Few of them have significant story impact, though; Pratchett includes them playfully, or out of interest in their historical significance. He has a similar fascination with the era's slang and the historical oddities of Mayhew's 1851 social survey London Labour and the London Poor. For instance, he devotes a fair bit of the book to exploring the entrepreneurial creativity and secret religion of toshers, who made their living searching for lost valuables in London's sewers.
Stylistically, Dodger doesn't differ
significantly from Pratchett's books marketed to older readers. He still
engages in his usual wry, straight-faced wordplay: Dodger contemplates
being a "successful urchin" by "studying how to urch." At another point,
a suspicious doctor gives him "a cursory glance which had quite a lot
of curse in it." But these linguistic gags are rare in a book that's
more focused on the violent, miserablist aspects of Victorian England,
which Pratchett doesn't soften or elide for young-adult readers.
Still, Dodger reads as swooningly optimistic compared to much of Pratchett's recent writing. Dodger's consummate skill at everything he tries makes him a wish-fulfillment fantasy of competent coolness. It's no wonder everyone who meets him speculates about his bright future. Even Dickens expresses his "great expectations," then thoughtfully writes that phrase down for later consideration. And as Dodger's cocky cleverness increasingly impresses Dickens, it's clear where he got the inspiration for a certain Oliver Twist character.
But it's Dodger's moral heroism that stands out. Growing up in an oppressive environment of easy betrayal and cutthroat competition for scant resources, he nonetheless remains generous, loyal and brave, with an idealistic sense of justice — maybe a bit too much of a paper saint at times. But Dodger finds ways to put all that goodness to use. By turning this talented urchin into one young woman's "knight in soaking armor" (to use Dickens' description), Pratchett provides a focus for Dodger's better qualities.
Underneath that encroaching cynicism, Pratchett has always had a not-so-secret romantic heart. Dodger just represents a rare case of him wearing it on his sleeve.
In 2011, NPR's Morning Edition interviewed fantasy author Terry Pratchett about becoming a legalized-suicide advocate in his native England, after his diagnosis with early-onset Alzheimer's. Asked about the increasingly grim turns in his best-selling Discworld novels (recent books have dealt with war, systemic slavery, demonic possession, and what it means to be human), Pratchett suggested that it wasn't illness but age that has made him cynical and prone to see the world more critically.
But that cynicism isn't apparent in his new young-adult novel Dodger, one of only a handful of Pratchett books that departs from his 39-volume Discworld series. His protagonists normally display bitter, hard-won humanism, and battle their own skepticism along with outside forces. But Dodger is sunnier and more upbeat. As Pratchett explores life in Victorian London, bringing in famous figures and lingering over unusual professions, it's hard to shake the notion that he's enjoying his excursion into historical drama too much to be all that hard on his characters.
The eponymous Dodger is a tough-minded, goodhearted 17-year-old orphan who knows every con and survival angle in London, including the importance of minding his own business. But he can't help interfering when he sees two men viciously beating a young woman. Leaving the victim in the care of passersby — Punch magazine co-founder Henry Mayhew and writer Charles Dickens, it happens — he aims his considerable resourcefulness at ferreting out her attackers, who turn out to have far-reaching political connections.
Solving the mystery of her background and the problem of her ongoing safety brings him into contact with characters both real and fictional — everyone from Benjamin Disraeli to Sweeney Todd. Few of them have significant story impact, though; Pratchett includes them playfully, or out of interest in their historical significance. He has a similar fascination with the era's slang and the historical oddities of Mayhew's 1851 social survey London Labour and the London Poor. For instance, he devotes a fair bit of the book to exploring the entrepreneurial creativity and secret religion of toshers, who made their living searching for lost valuables in London's sewers.
Robin Matthews/HarperCollins Terry
Pratchett is a best-selling English novelist and author of the
Discworld series. He was appointed Officer of the Order of the British
Empire and, in 2009, was knighted for his services to literature.
Still, Dodger reads as swooningly optimistic compared to much of Pratchett's recent writing. Dodger's consummate skill at everything he tries makes him a wish-fulfillment fantasy of competent coolness. It's no wonder everyone who meets him speculates about his bright future. Even Dickens expresses his "great expectations," then thoughtfully writes that phrase down for later consideration. And as Dodger's cocky cleverness increasingly impresses Dickens, it's clear where he got the inspiration for a certain Oliver Twist character.
But it's Dodger's moral heroism that stands out. Growing up in an oppressive environment of easy betrayal and cutthroat competition for scant resources, he nonetheless remains generous, loyal and brave, with an idealistic sense of justice — maybe a bit too much of a paper saint at times. But Dodger finds ways to put all that goodness to use. By turning this talented urchin into one young woman's "knight in soaking armor" (to use Dickens' description), Pratchett provides a focus for Dodger's better qualities.
Underneath that encroaching cynicism, Pratchett has always had a not-so-secret romantic heart. Dodger just represents a rare case of him wearing it on his sleeve.
Monday, September 24, 2012
Terry Pratchett: Choosing to Die
From The Australian: Terry Pratchett: Choosing to Die
PRESENTED by fantasy writer Terry Pratchett, this film is about assisted suicide.
In its opening seconds, Pratchett tells us he is 62 years old and was diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease in 2007. For him at the moment, in his own words, life with Alzheimer's is full of small but embarrassing inconveniences. He says he won't remember your name seconds after you tell it to him because of his problem with short-term memory. A few years ago he stopped being able to type and now dictates his work to Rob, a personal assistant. Pratchett tells us he has almost finished the first draft of his new book, Snuff. Rob clarifies that it is in fact the 38th draft of the book. "Is it?", asks Pratchett, incredulous but without a trace of irritation or self-pity.
Pratchett knows some people are against assisted dying for religious,
moral or practical reasons. "They fear that we may open the floodgates
to widespread and uncontrollable killing of the vulnerable," he says.
The film then focuses on the stories of people suffering from incurable
illnesses who want to choose the time and manner of their death; to
have, as Pratchett says, the death they want. A thought-provoking
investigation into a serious real-world dilemma.Terry Pratchett: Choosing to Die, Sunday, 9.30pm, SBS One
PRESENTED by fantasy writer Terry Pratchett, this film is about assisted suicide.
In its opening seconds, Pratchett tells us he is 62 years old and was diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease in 2007. For him at the moment, in his own words, life with Alzheimer's is full of small but embarrassing inconveniences. He says he won't remember your name seconds after you tell it to him because of his problem with short-term memory. A few years ago he stopped being able to type and now dictates his work to Rob, a personal assistant. Pratchett tells us he has almost finished the first draft of his new book, Snuff. Rob clarifies that it is in fact the 38th draft of the book. "Is it?", asks Pratchett, incredulous but without a trace of irritation or self-pity.
Wednesday, September 19, 2012
Posts Resume Sep 24 2012
My mom, who is 75, wants to go up to teeny tiny town near Rapid City,
to see her sister, who is 80. They live in a house in the boonies and
have no internet.
I'll be back online on Monday the 24th and promise not to miss another day.
Please bear with me, your patience is appreciated!
I'll be back online on Monday the 24th and promise not to miss another day.
Please bear with me, your patience is appreciated!
Monday, September 17, 2012
Sir Terry Pratchett: "I thought my Alzheimer's would be a lot worse than this by now"
From the Telegraph: Sir Terry Pratchett: "I thought my Alzheimer's would be a lot worse than this by now"
So persistent and alarming have been the advance warnings of Sir Terry
Pratchett’s impending mental decline that the oddest thing about meeting him
is his apparent normality. It is five years since the comic fantasy fiction
author announced his “embuggeration” , a very Pratchetty way of describing a
diagnosis of Alzheimer’s disease. By now, you fear, he will be slowing up,
imagination fogged, creative powers shrivelled as a walnut.
Instead of that, the little man in black is a delightful affront to medical
science, looking wizardly well in his black fedora with a jaunty feather in
the trim. His handshake is firm, his eyes piercingly bright. He talks for 90
minutes with great fluency – although it does occur to me after a while that
his habit of answering questions with an anecdote, or another question, may
be a way of playing for time.
A new book is out, one of three he is working on this year. Since the
diagnosis, he has made two television documentaries, continued his
international book promotion tours and become an industrious ambassador for
assisted dying. Is this one miraculous burst of defiance before the dying of
the light, or did they somehow get it wrong?
“I have to tell you that I thought I’d be a lot worse than this by now,” he
says. “And so did my specialist. At the moment, it’s the fact that I’m well
into my sixties [he is 64] that’s the problem. All the minor things that
flesh is heir to. This knee is giving me a bit of gyp. That sort of thing.
And I’m well into the time of life when a man knows he has a prostate. By
the time you’ve reached your sixties you do know that one day you will die
and knowing that is at least the beginning of wisdom.”
Pratchett has posterior cortical atrophy (PCA), a rare form of early
Alzheimer’s, which affects the back part of the brain responsible for
recognising visual symbols. Sometimes he cannot see the cup that is in front
of him. Clumsiness is another of the symptoms. When he tremblingly puts his
glass of juice down on a glass-topped table in his hotel suite, it makes a
crash, as if he misjudged the distance, but then glass-topped tables are
tricky. I might easily have done the same. You don’t know with Pratchett,
and often nor does he, how much to attribute to his disease and how much is
natural ageing. So far, the cognitive parts of his mind seem untouched.
“One of the first things to go was the touch-typing. Kind of a bugger , I
thought. Fortunately, technology has come to my aid.” He now speaks his
books to a computer through a voice-recognition programme, or dictates them
to his assistant, Rob Wilkins, who reads back the words at the end of the
day. The new novel, Dodger, a virtuoso tale that shuttles between the
sewers and grand houses of Dickensian London, was “written” in nine months.
Is putting a book together more difficult now?
“Better! Easier!” he yelps. “If it all came back, I would probably stick with talking. Because we’re monkeys. We chatter. It’s easy to do. It’s mutable.”
And the imaginative side? Pratchett’s teeming brain has spewed forth 50 books, 39 of them set in the alternative realm of Discworld. He has sold 80 million and been translated into 38 languages. The fact that he was Britain’s bestselling living author of fiction before JK Rowling came along perversely adds to his achivement rather than diminishes it. Interwoven with historical figures such as Charles Dickens, Robert Peel and Disraeli, Dodger is convincing proof of his still galloping imagination. “Sometimes I wish I could do something to slow it down. My wife says she can hear me plotting in my sleep.
“I do not know if it’s all suddenly going to go blong. In terms of fit-for-purpose, my life is OK. By the time I’ve unlocked the chapel – the shed where I work – the computer is on and away I go. I probably know what the first word will be. The pattern goes like this: tappity, tap, tap tap. Do your work. Then go and feed the chickens. Then go and shoo the sheep out of the garden. It’s good to get out into the sunshine, do a few other things, then back to work and away you go.”
Pratchett and his wife, Lyn , who have been married for 44 years, live in what he calls “a Domesday manorette” south-west of Salisbury. I would dearly like to have seen his allegedly mouse-infested office with its six computer screens, gothic lectern, dusty books and assortment of skulls, but for some reason he is going to meet me “half way”. When I turn up at the Hilton Metropole hotel in Birmingham, a disappointingly un-Pratchett- like conference centre near the airport, there is something odd going on. A character in a long black cloak and cavalier’s hat with ostrich feather is hobnobbing with a group of over-made-up women. Another face-painted woman, wearing a wisp of green gauze and not much else, drifts by, causing no eyebrow to be raised. There is a peculiar hum about the place, as though a pantomime is about to start.
And in a way it is. “Didn’t they tell you?” exclaims Pratchett’s assistant Rob. Tell me what? That this is the opening day of the eighth Discworld Convention, a celebration – with seminars, merchandise, games, dancing and role-play – of the fantasy universe according to Pratchett, the pre-eminent imaginer of dragons, creator of Rincewind the magician, of Nanny Ogg and Granny Weatherwax, of the repulsive conman Moist von Lipwig. The fans’ weekend takeover is total. Areas of the usually staid hotel have been renamed and mapped – Sator Square, Krull, Wyrmberg, Unseen University and The Odium. It is a complicated place, requiring a Lonely Dysc guide and a spotters’ crib-sheet to help Discworld novices identify guests by their mannerisms and garb. It is completely, wondrously bonkers.
Serene in the middle of it all, with a plastic name-tag dangling around his neck, is Sir Terry, worshipped for his stories and now especially for his ability to keep them coming.
He sometimes sounds annoyed that his campaign to increase funding for dementia research and for the right to die with dignity has diverted interest away from his prodigious writing career. Does he ever regret making his predicament public? “Never for one single iota of a moment. Saving your presence, I do get annoyed when interviews are all about that, although I know it’s my own fault. But it gave me almost a new lease of life.”
Since he “stepped out”, as he puts it, people have started coming up to him in the street, in theatres, in cafés, to thank him. They tell him about their terminally ill mother, husband, grandmother who suffered needless protracted agonies and indignities. “They say, 'I’m not going to go the way my mother went.’ ” In 2009, his two-hour BBC documentary Living with Alzheimer’s won two Baftas and made him the public face of the disease. The following year, he gave the Richard Dimbleby Lecture, Shaking Hands with Death, arguing that a person in extremis should be able to make a decision to die when the balance of their mind is “level, realistic, stoic, pragmatic and sharp”.
He is dismayed that Tony Nicklinson, the severely disabled man who fought and last month lost an impassioned campaign to end his life, effectively had to starve himself to death. “I put his picture on the little lectern by my desk because I don’t want this guy forgotten. He was very clear about what he wanted and you cannot tell me that two doctors helping him to go to sleep [as in a Dignitas clinic in Switzerland], would constitute murder. It cannot be murder. The law says it’s murder so the law is most definitely wrong and needs to be changed. This poor guy was a prisoner of technology.”
Ideally, Pratchett wants to live his own life to the full and then, before the disease mounts its final attack and before words fail him in the most literal sense, to die in a chair on his lawn with Thomas Tallis on his iPod, a brandy in his hand and whatever modern version of the ''Brompton cocktail’’ a helpful medic can supply.
He has called the desperate little stream of travellers to Dignitas “the shame of Britain” and harks back to the days when doctors were unafraid to “help people over the step, and were expected to, without any words ever being said by the family”. It has never seemed likely that Pratchett himself would elect to die in a foreign country, but he is not inclined to share his shifting thoughts on the subject. “I have no road map,” he says, perhaps more to protect his wife than himself.
Will she support him in whatever he decides? “I believe this is going to be the case,” he says opaquely. “But we discuss it in oblique terms. We share the same temperament. She doesn’t like bullies – and in the opposition to assisted dying there is a certain amount of bullying: 'Because I believe in this God whom you do not, I insist that you are not allowed to die.’ ”
Does he have any sympathy with those whose religious beliefs set them against assisted suicide? Pratchett veers off, as is his way. “Would it surprise you if I say that often when I’m gardening I’m singing hymns?” And he launches into a Sunday school favourite that must have been excised from Hymns Ancient & Modern long ago:
“Over the world there are small brown babies/ Fathers and mothers and babies dear/ They do not know the love of Jesus/ No one to tell them that he is near…”
He has a certain affection for the Church of England, because it “understands the English”, and he recently gave a lot of money to a small church near his home “because I don’t think we should let good churches go.” But does he believe in God?
“Do you?” he parries. “If Jesus suddenly walked in I would like to have a really good conversation with him but I’m not going to take anyone’s word for it beyond that. I don’t believe in the war god of the Israelites. He’s a bogeyman. Jesus preached the golden rule, by and large.”
He recalls a strange moment in the second euthanasia documentary he made, Terry Pratchett: Choosing to Die, about three men with degenerative illnesses. One was Peter Smedley, who had motor neurone disease, filmed in his dying moments at Dignitas. “When it was over, Erica, our statuesque nurse, opened the window and said, 'I have no religion but I believe the soul leaves the body within 36 hours of death.’ I was freaked out anyway and I freaked out even further. I think that kind of ambiguity is being human.”
There is a sharp drollness about Pratchett, son of a motor mechanic, that gives his books their edge and will spice the autobiography he is writing. He has just finished the chapter On Being Rich. “There is a soak-the-rich attitude in the air, a feeling that if you have a lot of money you must have got it by some ghastly means. I can quite happily say there was never any family money. All the money we got was mine, just from writing books.”
His pride is not misplaced. The Pratchetts were a happy but thrifty family whose idea of a holiday was a week in Lyme Regis with friends. Terry was a forensic sort of boy, fond of expeditioning and experiments. “My father encouraged me to do all the Just William things. He was never so pleased as when I electrocuted him by setting up a little device in his shed to give him a shock when he opened the door.” Crystal sets, astronomy, science… if the boy had a legitimate passion, his parents encouraged it.
He came to reading late, through a chance encounter with The Wind in the Willows. It detonated a love of books “similar to Hiroshima” and his real education began thereafter at the Beaconsfield public library, where he “read like a mowing machine”.
He was a journalist in his native Buckinghamshire and then a press officer for the Central Electricity Generating Board, writing science-fiction novels in the evenings, before deciding to write full-time. For security, his mother hoped he would get a proper job in an office again. Only when he bought his parents a new house was she reassured that he must be doing all right.
I make a foolish comment to the effect that he is a very lucky man. In the circumstances, he could have issued a devastating put-down but just gives one of his glittering stares. “Yes,” he says. “And the harder I work, the luckier I become.”
Money means that he will not have to worry about his wife after he is gone. It means he can afford the Alzheimer’s drug Aricept, which he is too young to receive free under the NHS. He has donated £500,000 to Alzheimer’s research. He can experiment with strange treatments, such as the flashing helmet with light rays that may rejuvenate his brain cells. And he hopes that when the time comes he will be able to buy the right kind of care to die well.
“The word 'care’ has come to have the same aura to it as the term 'workhouse’,” he says. “Like most people, I would rather die at home. I’m certainly going to be buried
at home. I have enough ground. And the nice thing is that it would be sacred ground at last.”
Terry Pratchett’s new novel, Dodger (Doubleday Children’s, £18.99), is available to order from Telegraph Books at £16.99 + £1.35 p & p. Call 0844 871 1515 or visit books.telegraph.co.uk
Is putting a book together more difficult now?
“Better! Easier!” he yelps. “If it all came back, I would probably stick with talking. Because we’re monkeys. We chatter. It’s easy to do. It’s mutable.”
And the imaginative side? Pratchett’s teeming brain has spewed forth 50 books, 39 of them set in the alternative realm of Discworld. He has sold 80 million and been translated into 38 languages. The fact that he was Britain’s bestselling living author of fiction before JK Rowling came along perversely adds to his achivement rather than diminishes it. Interwoven with historical figures such as Charles Dickens, Robert Peel and Disraeli, Dodger is convincing proof of his still galloping imagination. “Sometimes I wish I could do something to slow it down. My wife says she can hear me plotting in my sleep.
“I do not know if it’s all suddenly going to go blong. In terms of fit-for-purpose, my life is OK. By the time I’ve unlocked the chapel – the shed where I work – the computer is on and away I go. I probably know what the first word will be. The pattern goes like this: tappity, tap, tap tap. Do your work. Then go and feed the chickens. Then go and shoo the sheep out of the garden. It’s good to get out into the sunshine, do a few other things, then back to work and away you go.”
Pratchett and his wife, Lyn , who have been married for 44 years, live in what he calls “a Domesday manorette” south-west of Salisbury. I would dearly like to have seen his allegedly mouse-infested office with its six computer screens, gothic lectern, dusty books and assortment of skulls, but for some reason he is going to meet me “half way”. When I turn up at the Hilton Metropole hotel in Birmingham, a disappointingly un-Pratchett- like conference centre near the airport, there is something odd going on. A character in a long black cloak and cavalier’s hat with ostrich feather is hobnobbing with a group of over-made-up women. Another face-painted woman, wearing a wisp of green gauze and not much else, drifts by, causing no eyebrow to be raised. There is a peculiar hum about the place, as though a pantomime is about to start.
And in a way it is. “Didn’t they tell you?” exclaims Pratchett’s assistant Rob. Tell me what? That this is the opening day of the eighth Discworld Convention, a celebration – with seminars, merchandise, games, dancing and role-play – of the fantasy universe according to Pratchett, the pre-eminent imaginer of dragons, creator of Rincewind the magician, of Nanny Ogg and Granny Weatherwax, of the repulsive conman Moist von Lipwig. The fans’ weekend takeover is total. Areas of the usually staid hotel have been renamed and mapped – Sator Square, Krull, Wyrmberg, Unseen University and The Odium. It is a complicated place, requiring a Lonely Dysc guide and a spotters’ crib-sheet to help Discworld novices identify guests by their mannerisms and garb. It is completely, wondrously bonkers.
Serene in the middle of it all, with a plastic name-tag dangling around his neck, is Sir Terry, worshipped for his stories and now especially for his ability to keep them coming.
He sometimes sounds annoyed that his campaign to increase funding for dementia research and for the right to die with dignity has diverted interest away from his prodigious writing career. Does he ever regret making his predicament public? “Never for one single iota of a moment. Saving your presence, I do get annoyed when interviews are all about that, although I know it’s my own fault. But it gave me almost a new lease of life.”
Since he “stepped out”, as he puts it, people have started coming up to him in the street, in theatres, in cafés, to thank him. They tell him about their terminally ill mother, husband, grandmother who suffered needless protracted agonies and indignities. “They say, 'I’m not going to go the way my mother went.’ ” In 2009, his two-hour BBC documentary Living with Alzheimer’s won two Baftas and made him the public face of the disease. The following year, he gave the Richard Dimbleby Lecture, Shaking Hands with Death, arguing that a person in extremis should be able to make a decision to die when the balance of their mind is “level, realistic, stoic, pragmatic and sharp”.
He is dismayed that Tony Nicklinson, the severely disabled man who fought and last month lost an impassioned campaign to end his life, effectively had to starve himself to death. “I put his picture on the little lectern by my desk because I don’t want this guy forgotten. He was very clear about what he wanted and you cannot tell me that two doctors helping him to go to sleep [as in a Dignitas clinic in Switzerland], would constitute murder. It cannot be murder. The law says it’s murder so the law is most definitely wrong and needs to be changed. This poor guy was a prisoner of technology.”
Ideally, Pratchett wants to live his own life to the full and then, before the disease mounts its final attack and before words fail him in the most literal sense, to die in a chair on his lawn with Thomas Tallis on his iPod, a brandy in his hand and whatever modern version of the ''Brompton cocktail’’ a helpful medic can supply.
He has called the desperate little stream of travellers to Dignitas “the shame of Britain” and harks back to the days when doctors were unafraid to “help people over the step, and were expected to, without any words ever being said by the family”. It has never seemed likely that Pratchett himself would elect to die in a foreign country, but he is not inclined to share his shifting thoughts on the subject. “I have no road map,” he says, perhaps more to protect his wife than himself.
Will she support him in whatever he decides? “I believe this is going to be the case,” he says opaquely. “But we discuss it in oblique terms. We share the same temperament. She doesn’t like bullies – and in the opposition to assisted dying there is a certain amount of bullying: 'Because I believe in this God whom you do not, I insist that you are not allowed to die.’ ”
Does he have any sympathy with those whose religious beliefs set them against assisted suicide? Pratchett veers off, as is his way. “Would it surprise you if I say that often when I’m gardening I’m singing hymns?” And he launches into a Sunday school favourite that must have been excised from Hymns Ancient & Modern long ago:
“Over the world there are small brown babies/ Fathers and mothers and babies dear/ They do not know the love of Jesus/ No one to tell them that he is near…”
He has a certain affection for the Church of England, because it “understands the English”, and he recently gave a lot of money to a small church near his home “because I don’t think we should let good churches go.” But does he believe in God?
“Do you?” he parries. “If Jesus suddenly walked in I would like to have a really good conversation with him but I’m not going to take anyone’s word for it beyond that. I don’t believe in the war god of the Israelites. He’s a bogeyman. Jesus preached the golden rule, by and large.”
He recalls a strange moment in the second euthanasia documentary he made, Terry Pratchett: Choosing to Die, about three men with degenerative illnesses. One was Peter Smedley, who had motor neurone disease, filmed in his dying moments at Dignitas. “When it was over, Erica, our statuesque nurse, opened the window and said, 'I have no religion but I believe the soul leaves the body within 36 hours of death.’ I was freaked out anyway and I freaked out even further. I think that kind of ambiguity is being human.”
There is a sharp drollness about Pratchett, son of a motor mechanic, that gives his books their edge and will spice the autobiography he is writing. He has just finished the chapter On Being Rich. “There is a soak-the-rich attitude in the air, a feeling that if you have a lot of money you must have got it by some ghastly means. I can quite happily say there was never any family money. All the money we got was mine, just from writing books.”
His pride is not misplaced. The Pratchetts were a happy but thrifty family whose idea of a holiday was a week in Lyme Regis with friends. Terry was a forensic sort of boy, fond of expeditioning and experiments. “My father encouraged me to do all the Just William things. He was never so pleased as when I electrocuted him by setting up a little device in his shed to give him a shock when he opened the door.” Crystal sets, astronomy, science… if the boy had a legitimate passion, his parents encouraged it.
He came to reading late, through a chance encounter with The Wind in the Willows. It detonated a love of books “similar to Hiroshima” and his real education began thereafter at the Beaconsfield public library, where he “read like a mowing machine”.
He was a journalist in his native Buckinghamshire and then a press officer for the Central Electricity Generating Board, writing science-fiction novels in the evenings, before deciding to write full-time. For security, his mother hoped he would get a proper job in an office again. Only when he bought his parents a new house was she reassured that he must be doing all right.
I make a foolish comment to the effect that he is a very lucky man. In the circumstances, he could have issued a devastating put-down but just gives one of his glittering stares. “Yes,” he says. “And the harder I work, the luckier I become.”
Money means that he will not have to worry about his wife after he is gone. It means he can afford the Alzheimer’s drug Aricept, which he is too young to receive free under the NHS. He has donated £500,000 to Alzheimer’s research. He can experiment with strange treatments, such as the flashing helmet with light rays that may rejuvenate his brain cells. And he hopes that when the time comes he will be able to buy the right kind of care to die well.
“The word 'care’ has come to have the same aura to it as the term 'workhouse’,” he says. “Like most people, I would rather die at home. I’m certainly going to be buried
at home. I have enough ground. And the nice thing is that it would be sacred ground at last.”
Terry Pratchett’s new novel, Dodger (Doubleday Children’s, £18.99), is available to order from Telegraph Books at £16.99 + £1.35 p & p. Call 0844 871 1515 or visit books.telegraph.co.uk
Sunday, September 9, 2012
Thursday, September 6, 2012
Stanford biologist and computer scientist discover the 'anternet'
If you recall, Ponder Stebbins at Unseen U niversity made a computer using ants as a driving force...I wonder if Pratchett had read about this work, or if these researchers got the idea from Pratchett?
From Stanford Engineering: Stanford biologist and computer scientist discover the 'anternet'
Deborah Gordon, a biology professor at Stanford, has been studying ants for more than 20 years. When she figured out how the harvester ant colonies she had been observing in Arizona decided when to send out more ants to get food, she called across campus to Balaji Prabhakar, a professor of computer science at Stanford and an expert on how files are transferred on a computer network. At first he didn't see any overlap between his and Gordon's work, but inspiration would soon strike.
"The next day it occurred to me, 'Oh wait, this is almost the same as how [Internet] protocols discover how much bandwidth is available for transferring a file!'" Prabhakar said. "The algorithm the ants were using to discover how much food there is available is essentially the same as that used in the Transmission Control Protocol."
Transmission Control Protocol, or TCP, is an algorithm that manages data congestion on the Internet, and as such was integral in allowing the early web to scale up from a few dozen nodes to the billions in use today. Here's how it works: As a source, A, transfers a file to a destination, B, the file is broken into numbered packets. When B receives each packet, it sends an acknowledgment, or an ack, to A, that the packet arrived.
This feedback loop allows TCP to run congestion avoidance: If acks return at a slower rate than the data was sent out, that indicates that there is little bandwidth available, and the source throttles data transmission down accordingly. If acks return quickly, the source boosts its transmission speed. The process determines how much bandwidth is available and throttles data transmission accordingly.
It turns out that harvester ants (Pogonomyrmex barbatus) behave nearly the same way when searching for food. Gordon has found that the rate at which harvester ants – which forage for seeds as individuals – leave the nest to search for food corresponds to food availability.
A forager won't return to the nest until it finds food. If seeds are plentiful, foragers return faster, and more ants leave the nest to forage. If, however, ants begin returning empty handed, the search is slowed, and perhaps called off.
Prabhakar wrote an ant algorithm to predict foraging behavior depending on the amount of food – i.e., bandwidth – available. Gordon's experiments manipulate the rate of forager return. Working with Stanford student Katie Dektar, they found that the TCP-influenced algorithm almost exactly matched the ant behavior found in Gordon's experiments.
"Ants have discovered an algorithm that we know well, and they've been doing it for millions of years," Prabhakar said.
They also found that the ants followed two other phases of TCP. One phase is known as slow start, which describes how a source sends out a large wave of packets at the beginning of a transmission to gauge bandwidth; similarly, when the harvester ants begin foraging, they send out foragers to scope out food availability before scaling up or down the rate of outgoing foragers.
Another protocol, called time-out, occurs when a data transfer link breaks or is disrupted, and the source stops sending packets. Similarly, when foragers are prevented from returning to the nest for more than 20 minutes, no more foragers leave the nest.
Prabhakar said that had this discovery been made in the 1970s, before TCP was written, harvester ants very well could have influenced the design of the Internet.
Gordon thinks that scientists have just scratched the surface for how ant colony behavior could help us in the design of networked systems.
There are 11,000 species of ants, living in every habitat and dealing with every type of ecological problem, Gordon said. "Ants have evolved ways of doing things that we haven't thought up, but could apply in computer systems. Computationally speaking, each ant has limited capabilities, but the collective can perform complex tasks.
"So ant algorithms have to be simple, distributed and scalable – the very qualities that we need in large engineered distributed systems," she said. "I think as we start understanding more about how species of ants regulate their behavior, we'll find many more useful applications for network algorithms."
The paper, "The Regulation of Ant Colony Foraging Activity without Spatial Information," appears in the August 23 issue of PLoS Computational Biology.
From Stanford Engineering: Stanford biologist and computer scientist discover the 'anternet'
A collaboration between a Stanford ant biologist and a computer scientist has revealed that the behavior of harvester ants as they forage for food mirrors the protocols that control traffic on the Internet.
On the surface, ants and the Internet don't seem to have much in common. But two Stanford researchers have discovered that a species of harvester ants determine how many foragers to send out of the nest in much the same way that Internet protocols discover how much bandwidth is available for the transfer of data. The researchers are calling it the "anternet."Deborah Gordon, a biology professor at Stanford, has been studying ants for more than 20 years. When she figured out how the harvester ant colonies she had been observing in Arizona decided when to send out more ants to get food, she called across campus to Balaji Prabhakar, a professor of computer science at Stanford and an expert on how files are transferred on a computer network. At first he didn't see any overlap between his and Gordon's work, but inspiration would soon strike.
"The next day it occurred to me, 'Oh wait, this is almost the same as how [Internet] protocols discover how much bandwidth is available for transferring a file!'" Prabhakar said. "The algorithm the ants were using to discover how much food there is available is essentially the same as that used in the Transmission Control Protocol."
Transmission Control Protocol, or TCP, is an algorithm that manages data congestion on the Internet, and as such was integral in allowing the early web to scale up from a few dozen nodes to the billions in use today. Here's how it works: As a source, A, transfers a file to a destination, B, the file is broken into numbered packets. When B receives each packet, it sends an acknowledgment, or an ack, to A, that the packet arrived.
This feedback loop allows TCP to run congestion avoidance: If acks return at a slower rate than the data was sent out, that indicates that there is little bandwidth available, and the source throttles data transmission down accordingly. If acks return quickly, the source boosts its transmission speed. The process determines how much bandwidth is available and throttles data transmission accordingly.
It turns out that harvester ants (Pogonomyrmex barbatus) behave nearly the same way when searching for food. Gordon has found that the rate at which harvester ants – which forage for seeds as individuals – leave the nest to search for food corresponds to food availability.
A forager won't return to the nest until it finds food. If seeds are plentiful, foragers return faster, and more ants leave the nest to forage. If, however, ants begin returning empty handed, the search is slowed, and perhaps called off.
Prabhakar wrote an ant algorithm to predict foraging behavior depending on the amount of food – i.e., bandwidth – available. Gordon's experiments manipulate the rate of forager return. Working with Stanford student Katie Dektar, they found that the TCP-influenced algorithm almost exactly matched the ant behavior found in Gordon's experiments.
"Ants have discovered an algorithm that we know well, and they've been doing it for millions of years," Prabhakar said.
They also found that the ants followed two other phases of TCP. One phase is known as slow start, which describes how a source sends out a large wave of packets at the beginning of a transmission to gauge bandwidth; similarly, when the harvester ants begin foraging, they send out foragers to scope out food availability before scaling up or down the rate of outgoing foragers.
Another protocol, called time-out, occurs when a data transfer link breaks or is disrupted, and the source stops sending packets. Similarly, when foragers are prevented from returning to the nest for more than 20 minutes, no more foragers leave the nest.
Prabhakar said that had this discovery been made in the 1970s, before TCP was written, harvester ants very well could have influenced the design of the Internet.
Gordon thinks that scientists have just scratched the surface for how ant colony behavior could help us in the design of networked systems.
There are 11,000 species of ants, living in every habitat and dealing with every type of ecological problem, Gordon said. "Ants have evolved ways of doing things that we haven't thought up, but could apply in computer systems. Computationally speaking, each ant has limited capabilities, but the collective can perform complex tasks.
"So ant algorithms have to be simple, distributed and scalable – the very qualities that we need in large engineered distributed systems," she said. "I think as we start understanding more about how species of ants regulate their behavior, we'll find many more useful applications for network algorithms."
The paper, "The Regulation of Ant Colony Foraging Activity without Spatial Information," appears in the August 23 issue of PLoS Computational Biology.
Preview: Carpe Jugulum at The People's Theatre, Newcastle
From ChronicleLive.uk: Preview: Carpe Jugulum at The People's Theatre, Newcastle
THE People’s Theatre Youth Theatre are bringing one of Sir Terry Pratchett’s multi-million selling books Carpe Jugulum to the stage.
Set on the Discworld, a world slowly travelling through space on the back of a giant turtle, Carpe Jugulum brings Pratchett’s renowned wit to the world of vampires.
The de Magpyrs are the sort of vampires that would have Count Dracula spinning in his grave: modern, forward-looking and no longer afraid of holy water, garlic, religious symbols or, indeed, of anything else.
Certainly not the type of people to invite to a royal naming ceremony. So when trouble brews, the Lancre witches, led by the fearsome Granny Weatherwax, must once again come to the rescue.
With vampires currently all the rage due to the success of the Twilight Saga, Carpe Jugulum is Pratchett’s own unique take on the subculture.
By setting his stories on another world, Pratchett is allowed to fully let his imagination run free. However, his writing spills over the genres meaning that there is something for everybody to enjoy.
Carpe Jugulum (latin for ‘seize the throat’!) is being brought to life in collaboration between the Young People’s Theatre and the People’s Theatre.
The show provides a large number of parts of differing sizes and
species and provides “a good opportunity for all the kids to play
character roles” according to the director Sarah McLane.
Due to the size of the youth theatre, the show will have two different casts, playing alternate nights, ensuring that everybody gets a part that they can sink their teeth into.
It runs from September 18 to 22.
THE People’s Theatre Youth Theatre are bringing one of Sir Terry Pratchett’s multi-million selling books Carpe Jugulum to the stage.
Set on the Discworld, a world slowly travelling through space on the back of a giant turtle, Carpe Jugulum brings Pratchett’s renowned wit to the world of vampires.
The de Magpyrs are the sort of vampires that would have Count Dracula spinning in his grave: modern, forward-looking and no longer afraid of holy water, garlic, religious symbols or, indeed, of anything else.
Certainly not the type of people to invite to a royal naming ceremony. So when trouble brews, the Lancre witches, led by the fearsome Granny Weatherwax, must once again come to the rescue.
With vampires currently all the rage due to the success of the Twilight Saga, Carpe Jugulum is Pratchett’s own unique take on the subculture.
By setting his stories on another world, Pratchett is allowed to fully let his imagination run free. However, his writing spills over the genres meaning that there is something for everybody to enjoy.
Carpe Jugulum (latin for ‘seize the throat’!) is being brought to life in collaboration between the Young People’s Theatre and the People’s Theatre.
Due to the size of the youth theatre, the show will have two different casts, playing alternate nights, ensuring that everybody gets a part that they can sink their teeth into.
It runs from September 18 to 22.
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