Thursday, March 12, 2015

Sir Terry Pratchett, heroic to the end – Liberation

In the end, Death with his scythe and his long black coat, just get us all. He (as it may well be called “Death” is a man, if you do not know) would not be all this to be done. There is no special interest, it’s just work. It runs, sometimes with some good-natured, if He was endowed with feelings (what He would like very much). Thursday He picked, perhaps reluctantly, one of his greatest friends: Terry Pratchett. The great British author of heroic fantasy died at the age of 66 years. Pratchett was diagnosed several years ago with a rare form of Alzheimer’s disease. He knew that the hourglass ticked increasingly faster until his time is completely up. That did not bother him. It has long been an activist in several associations for the right to die. It is “died at his home, his cat asleep on his bed surrounded by his family,” said the editor in a statement. His official Twitter account – or perhaps was it itself, one would like to believe, anyway – has, in the early afternoon, live-tweeted his death in an odd curveball. “NOW, SIR TERRY WE HAVE TO WALK TOGETHER” said Death (It is always expressed in uppercase). Then, in a second message: “Terry took the arms of Death and followed him through the doors and in the black desert in the eternal night .” Before the last time: “THE END” .

Choir Series. This mix of humor and melodrama sums up the personality of the writer. With its 70 books, he was one of the most prolific authors and brightest of fantasy, as famous in the UK that JK Rowling. He is best known from the beginning of the 80s, for Annals of Discworld, wonderfully translated into French by Patrick Couton Editions L’Atalante. In 40 volumes and some special issue, he, with this saga, changed the fantasy, is constructing exact reverse of Tolkien. Where the Oxford philologist invented with Middle-earth, a dark world, serious, gothic, where good and evil clash without nuance, the man with the eternal hat created the burlesque Discworld, a planet flat and circular carried by four elephants, themselves perched on the Great A-Tuin, a turtle that ever floats across the Multiverse. The writer proved that fantasy, humor possible and perfectly compatible with epic adventures.

His first hero, Rincewind, is a “maje” (as written on his pointy hat ) by default. He was never able to successfully graduate from Unseen University, knows no spells and dreams of a peaceful use of assistant librarian. Coward never die is his main quality, it will still inadvertently save the world in Eighth Color and The Light Fantastic, published in 1983 and 1986. In this series choir, Rincewind addition, each volume is devoted to different characters and often recurring, like Captain Vimes, Vetinari, Granny Weatherwax, Cohen the Barbarian, Twoflower, and obviously the death. Present in most of the albums, the cosmopolitan city of Ankh-Morpork, a metaphor of London, is perhaps the most endearing character, as, over the years, it acquires its own personality.

Terry Pratchett, it was primarily a writing, slang footprint and word games, but also a political purpose. After first volumes schoolboys (and quite short), the author has given his planet, over stories of increasing length, depth and thickness of the worlds worthy of Dune Herbert or those of Foundation Asimov. The action always takes place “the century of the Rousette” equivalent of our Renaissance.

The people Discworld will experience gradually inventions and upheavals are some of the parables of our current society. Moving Pictures narrates the creation of the film; Stamped, that post, while coin is an economic treatise. The Truth on the press (serious and trash) should be put in all the hands of future journalists.

Hourglass of life. Refusing any moralism incompatible with humor, Terry Pratchett, however, distilled in his works the values ​​of humanism, tolerance and openness to the world. He not only wrote stories in this universe, sometimes venturing outside, especially with Neil Gaman (The good omens.) He had just published A Slip of the Keyboard where he collected speeches, articles and essays and non-fiction announced its next hollow disappearance.

knighted in 2008, weakened in recent years, it now sometimes signed his works with his wife always Lyn. It was hoped that, as Rincewind, her hourglass life is so tangled that Death forgets. Dud. It does not matter, the writer was ready. No doubt the lanky He has apologized to arrive early. Like his hero visiting The Last Continent, “not break the head,” surely answered Terry Pratchett.

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