Feeding the Dragon: Guards! Guards! and Brexit

For a book published 31 years ago, "Guards! Guards!" by Sir Terry Pratchett has a lot to tell us about Brexit. I started reading it for light relief from the news; it didn't entirely work, but did give me a new perspective.

(Minor spoilers follow, but as noted, it's been 31 years.)

I hadn't reread GG for at least a decade, and what struck me this time is how angry it is. I don't mean that as a bad thing. Beneath all the daft puns and jokes (which are extremely funny), is a deep and righteous anger at the petty evil of humanity.

Ltoinel, CC BY 3.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0>, via Wikimedia Commons

On Ready Player One: You, Sir, Are No Willy Wonka

I've got around to reading the 2011 novel Ready Player One by Ernest Cline. It made me angry. More than once I was tempted to throw the book against the wall, and I can't recall ever feeling that way before.

This might be unexpected, as it looks like something right up my alley. RP1 is an unabashed celebration of 1980s geekery. It is veritably stuffed with references to cult movies, roleplaying games, music, books, television, and most of all, computer games.

(For some reason, comics aren't mentioned. Maybe Cline isn't a fan. Needless to say, it's all boys' media; Jem And The Holograms doesn't rate a mention.)

I was born in 1978, loved many of these works as a kid, and still enjoy them today. I'm more than happy with modern productions depicting geeky 1980s kids (Stranger Things) or continuing series from that time (The Last Jedi). I was delighted to hear last week that Patrick Stewart is reprising his role from Star Trek: The Next Generation, in which he first appeared in 1987.

So, what's my problem?

Entitlement Issues Redux

I've been thinking about entitled fans, in relation to George RR Martin and Star Wars.

Where is the next book, George?

Martin's fans have awaited his next book with growing impatience, ever since A Dance With Dragons was published seven years ago this week. With admirable bluntness, Neil Gaiman once pointed out George RR Martin is not your bitch.

(Gaiman was writing in 2009, two years before A Dance With Dragons was published. Plus ça change.)

Here is a less combative analogy, which may help make the point:

Clean Reader: Because it's obscene

Clean Reader is software which does a search-and-replace on supposedly naughty words in e-books. Upon release, it encountered a well-deserved combination of fury, derision and hilarity; and now it is being withdrawn. I find myself with moderate dislike for Clean Reader, and absolute horror at its creators.

The town of Springfield had something much worse than Clean Reader.
Source: This is 912

(Unlike Dirty Reader, this is not an April Fool post; Clean Reader is very real.)

Terry Pratchett: The Letter I Should Have Written

It was announced this afternoon that Sir Terry Pratchett has died at the age of 66. He was a tremendously funny and brilliant writer, and his passing is a great loss to us all. This must be devastating for his friends and family, and they have my deepest sympathy.

A Just Giving page donating to the Research Institute for the Care of Older People (RICE), a dementia charity, has been set up in his memory. I have made a donation at: https://www.justgiving.com/Terry-Pratchett

Sir Terry Pratchett.
Source: psjmprints

I was fortunate enough to meet Sir Terry once, at a book signing in Edinburgh in 1997. I naively turned up with a few friends at the advertised start time, to find a queue already stretching out the doors of Waterstone's, and continuing a long way down the pavement at the east end of Princes Street. It was early summer, sometime in May I think, and the weather was good, so we didn't mind waiting.

The advertised time was something like 2 pm to 5 pm. At about 4.30, I was still outside the shop, but the word was passed down the line that Pratchett (not yet Sir Terry at that time) was going to do the whole queue. Sometime around 5.30, nervously clutching my hardback copy of Hogfather, I reached the front of the queue for my moment with the great man.