#gnu stp

I mean well within the first 50 or so pages of The Colour of Magic you have lines like:

"Thunder rolled. It rolled a six." And;

Heute ist Handtuchtag zu Ehren des verstorbenen Douglas Adams und seiner berühmten fünfteiligen Trilogie "Per Anhalter durch die Galaxis". Vergesst nicht, immer ein Handtuch dabei zu haben, damit der gefräßige Plapperkäfer von Traal Euch nicht sehen kann.

Außerdem ist heute Fliedertag! Auf der Scheibenwelt findet gerade in der Treacle Mine Road die Lila Revolution statt. "Truth! Freedom! Justice! Reasonably priced love. And a hard-boiled egg!"

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Today is Towel Day to honour the great and regrettably late Douglas Adams and his famous 5-partish trilogy "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy". Don't ever forget your Towel when travelling for you might encounter the ravenous bugblatter beast of Traal.

Also remember it's Lilac Day in remembrance of the great and also regrettably late Sir Terry Pratchett. "Truth! Freedom! Justice! Reasonably priced love. And a hardboiled egg."

I KNOW WHAT THE SPIRIT OF HOGSWATCH IS, ALBERT.

“Sorry, master. But, look, it’s all right, anyway, because she wakes up and it’s all bright and shining and tinkling music and there’s angels, master.”

Death stopped.

AH. THEY TURN UP AT THE LAST MINUTE WITH WARM CLOTHES AND A HOT DRINK?

Oh dear, thought Albert. The master’s really in one of his funny moods now.

“Er. No. Not exactly at the last minute, master. Not as such.”

WELL?

“More sort of just after the last minute.”

Albert coughed nervously.

YOU MEAN AFTER SHE’S—

“Yes. That’s how the story goes, master, ’s not my fault.”

WHY NOT TURN UP BEFORE? AN ANGEL HAS QUITE A LARGE CARRYING CAPACITY.

“Couldn’t say, master. I suppose people think it’s more... satisfying the other way..." Albert hesitated, and then frowned. “You know, now that I come to tell someone...”

Death looked down at the shape under the falling snow. Then he set the lifetimer on the air and touched it with a finger. A spark flashed across.

“You ain’t really allowed to do that,” said Albert, feeling wretched.

THE HOGFATHER CAN. THE HOGFATHER GIVES PRESENTS. THERE’S NO BETTER PRESENT THAN A FUTURE.

(Image by sandara.)

(Image by 1nkor.)

“No one is actually dead until the ripples they cause in the world die away.”

Sir Terry Pratchett (28 April 1948 - 12 March 2015)

Today, 6 years ago my favorite author died. Sir Terry Pratchett became 66 years old, and during his too-short life he wrote over forty amazing books, most of them parts of his Discworld series. Even when he developed Alzheimer's disease, he would keep writing, and though his later books are not entirely up to the same standard as those he wrote in his prime, they are still amazing books. He was just an extremely talented writer, who even with Alzheimer's could write smart, funny and thought-provoking stories.

Though set in a fantasy world, his characters are realistic and very deep, and the stories often mimic our world and problems, such as poverty, racism and gender inequality. This is done with humor and warmth, and often very subtly.

In addition he had a way with words, and the amount of cite-worthy quotes from his works is boundless. In one of my fanfiction stories I begin each chapter with a quote that fits the chapter's contents, and it's never hard to find one to match. The problem is rather choosing between the many options...

I shall end this In Memoriam with one of my favorite quotes:

Vimes 'Boots' Theory of Socioeconomic Unfairness

The reason that the rich were so rich, Vimes reasoned, was because they managed to spend less money.

Take boots, for example. He earned thirty-eight dollars a month plus allowances. A really good pair of leather boots cost fifty dollars. But an affordable pair of boots, which were sort of OK for a season or two and then leaked like hell when the cardboard gave out, cost about ten dollars. Those were the kind of boots Vimes always bought, and wore until the soles were so thin that he could tell where he was in Ankh-Morpork on a foggy night by the feel of the cobbles.

But the thing was that good boots lasted for years and years. A man who could afford fifty dollars had a pair of boots that'd still be keeping his feet dry in ten years' time, while the poor man who could only afford cheap boots would have spent a hundred dollars on boots in the same time and would still have wet feet.

This was the Captain Samuel Vimes 'Boots' theory of socioeconomic unfairness.

― Terry Pratchett, Men at Arms

I somehow doubt that Sir Terry had ever seen Deep Space Nine, and even if he had I would not be inclined to call it plagiarism, much the same way as I don't call it plagiarism when Leonard Cohen has a song with some very distinct phrases in common with a Cream song released earlier that year, but the fact remains that we have two very parallel texts, in which our hero/heroes are thrown back in time involuntarily and find themselves under arrest in a dystopian past on the verge of a riot, and end up replacing the dead leader/member of that riot in such a way that the broad strokes of history are preserved.

And I think that's fascinating. I will certainly have more thoughts on it when I have read more of Night Watch.