
Terry Pratchett's unfinished novels destroyed by steamroller - robin_reala
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2017/aug/30/terry-pratchett-unfinished-novels-destroyed-streamroller
======
joosters
Good to see his wishes fulfilled. In the end, it was his choice and no-one
else's.

In comparison, Douglas Adams' remaining incomplete notes were turned into a
book after he died (The Salmon Of Doubt). As a fan, it was frustrating to read
- you could see his moments of genius, but the gaps in the story and the
unrefined parts of the text were a let down. I gladly bought the book, but
after finishing it, I'm not sure it was a good choice to publish the
unfinished writings.

If an author had a very-nearly complete book, I reckon it might be worthwhile
to let someone else do the final tidying up and publish, but if Terry
Pratchett's remaining works were lots of partially complete writings, I think
it would be a poor reflection on the author to let someone else work on them.

~~~
tripzilch
On the other hand, if it weren't for the _Salmon of Doubt_ , I wouldn't have
realized Adams' genius writings on other (non-fiction) topics besides THHGTTG
and Dirk Gently. In fairness, I could have found that out in other ways if I'd
have looked, but thanks to Salmon of Doubt I've come to appreciate the man's
writings and personality in a much broader way.

So I say it was a good thing overall. Even though it was also sad because it
was the unfinished writings of a dead author I love.

~~~
tjalfi
You might like [0]. It's a lecture he gave about his nonfiction book Last
Chance to See.

[0]
[https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=_ZG8HBuDjgc](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=_ZG8HBuDjgc)

------
paulajohnson
I have mixed feelings about this. On the one hand this was his wish, but on
the other hand I am sure that future generations of pratchettologists will
mourn the loss.

~~~
Ntrails
It's interesting the parallels I see between this and right to die.

He didn't want to destroy his work whilst he could still work. But if he waits
too long and misses the opportunity to take action whilst in good health he
may lose control over it. Without the other limiting factors - this feels like
a very easy call. I'm thrilled that he trusted people to see his wishes
through - and as importantly that they've shown themselves to be deserving of
said trust

~~~
gambiting
I'm really annoyed that Pope John Paul's II wishes were not respected by his
life long friend and right hand - Cardinal Dziwisz - Pope asked him to burn
all his notes after his death, which the cardinal promised, and then released
all the notes in a book after pope's death. I can "sort of" get his reasoning
- that these notes were extremely valuable to the church and people in general
- but a personal wish, especially such as this, should be respected in my
opinion.

~~~
dingaling
That's an interesting example of where personal wishes cross over the
'corporate' boundary. The person is subsumed by the job and unless they
display huge self-restraint it will be difficult to separate personal notes
from their corporate thinking.

Presidential diaries would be another example, or a CEO's Rolodex.

~~~
frobozz
Here's the story: [https://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/05/world/europe/entrusted-
to...](https://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/05/world/europe/entrusted-to-burn-john-
paul-iis-notes-cardinal-publishes-them-instead.html). It isn't just The Pope's
notes, but notes that predate his inauguration as Pope, and it isn't just
about retention, but about publication.

Both retention and publication go against the wishes of the deceased, but I
would see putting them in the Vatican Archives for a few researchers to peruse
as a lesser transgression than putting them in a book for all to see.

I agree with you that there is probably a legal or moral requirement to retain
the notes of Pope John Paul II, and that may override his personal wishes
(though, again, in an archive, rather than in all good bookshops).

You are also correct that it may be difficult, or even impossible to separate
JP2's notes from Karol Wojtyla's notes after 1978, but what about before? Are
the notes of Bishop of Ombi or the Archbishop of Krakow also as important? How
far back does the corporate entanglement go?

~~~
mikeash
In addition to the moral questions, wouldn't this be a straightforward
copyright violation?

~~~
nobodyorother
My (somewhat oblique) question is why copyright would apply to a dead guy's
works. ...It's not like respecting copyright is going to get him to write
more.

~~~
mikeash
The standard answer is that it incentivizes living authors to know that their
heirs will be able to continue to benefit from their work.

In any case, the question of why it is that way doesn't much matter for this
particular question. Regardless of why copyright applies to a dead guy's
works, it does.

------
excalibur
This is dramatic and certainly renders the drive itself useless, but this is
not how you securely destroy data. The bits on those platters are still
largely recoverable. Do Terry a favor and run that drive over a degausser (or
at least a really big magnet) before putting it in a museum. And let everyone
know you did it. Remove the temptation for someone to steal it, attempt a
forensic recovery, and try to sell unfinished Terry Pratchett novels that the
author never intended to see the light of day.

~~~
Johnny555
That sounds like a lot of money to spend to get fragments of notes for an
unfinished book that you can't even sell as "Terry Pratchett's Unfinished
Book" because his estate would sue you. Not to mention the legal risk of
stealing the hard drive fragments then publicly admitting that you did it when
you publish your book.

~~~
excalibur
Well when step one is "steal hard drive from museum", you can assume that the
sale and (initial) distribution are unlikely to be conducted above-board.
Depending on one's access to sophisticated forensic tools, this may still be a
difficult undertaking to extract any profit from. But money isn't the only
possible motive.

------
phreack
Before anyone else gets enraged, this was Terry's will being honored. However,
there's a debate to be had regarding whether it would have been worthy to
release his final works even if incomplete and against his wishes.

~~~
senectus1
meh, I dont care what "debate" there is about it. It was his dying wish. Not
for filling that is disrespectful in the extreme.

He wants his legacy to be as static as possible and not pimped out and whore'd
to the highest bidder. Fair enough I say.

~~~
adrianN
Kafka also wanted everything burned. Imagine what a loss that would have been.

~~~
anvandare
The world would have been fine. We've probably lost uncountable number of
beautiful works to destruction and geniuses to crib death that would have
otherwise completely changed the (cultural) state of the world, but we don't
miss them because we never knew about them. The path history took is as valid
as all other paths it could have taken.

~~~
Houshalter
Sure the world is fine. But that's a really low bar of argument. If someone
was going to go back in time and destroy great works, would you not strongly
prefer them be stopped? (All else equal and no secondary consequences from
time travel or whatever.) Do they have literally no utility to the world in
your mind?

~~~
anvandare
No, because that's a paradoxical requirement. I can't care for things which I
never knew (could have) existed, and interfering with reality so that they
would exist would require me to care enough for them to exist so as to
interfere in the first place.

Every action we make chooses one from (infinite) branches of reality. Favoring
one over the other is meaningless. The result of things existing will always
be other things not existing. The atoms that I'm using to exist could have
been used to compose other entities instead. You're assuming a sort of
situation where everything that could exist would exist. A Borgesian library
where not only every possible work of Kafka is written, but in every possible
variation. The act of writing by itself destroys every alternative work. Are
we certain that the Kafka we have is the _best_ Kafka we could have?

One morning, when Gregor Samsa woke from troubled dreams, he found himself
transformed in his bed into a horrible vermin.

One morning, when Georg Samsa woke from troubled dreams, he found himself
transformed in his bed into a disgusting bug.

One day, when Georg Valta woke from troubled dreams, he found himself awake in
his bed transformed into a horrible vermin.

In the morning, when Georg Sanka woke from dreadful dreams, he found himself
awake in bed in the body of a nightmarish vermin.

...

~~~
Houshalter
You can assign value to different world states. All of life is about trying to
steer reality into branches we prefer! Every decision you will ever make is to
increase the probability of world states you desire more. If you really didn't
have any preferences, you wouldn't do anything at all.

And yes, I absolutely would prefer to live in the world state with optimal
Kafka. You really wouldn't? If Kafka came up to and asked him to help you with
his wording or something, you wouldn't assist him at all?

~~~
anvandare
Yes, you can assign values to different world versions, but each version would
have their own values. It's a meaningless (to others), subjective
categorization. There is no solution to the trolley problem where both
branches agree to let one branch die.

I didn't mean that I do not have any preferences, but that my preferences
aren't special or better than others' preferences, in the same way that
another version of the world (where Pratchett's wishes were overruled) is not
a better world than the current one. I think I'm skirting close to Leibniz
here. Yes, the world could be better, but it would not be our world, and it
would only be better to some of us, and worse for others.

It's highly unlikely that your best Kafka is my best Kafka. As such there is
no Best Kafka. The world in which I help Kafka finish The Castle is one in
which (for want of a nail) a trillion years from now the Zormulons exterminate
the Qdhraxians. I doubt the Qdhraxians are happy I at least got an ending to a
story.

------
clarkevans
I've found Ursla Vernon
([http://www.redwombatstudio.com/](http://www.redwombatstudio.com/)) to be a
witty and lucid writer much in the spirit of Sir. Pratchett.

~~~
aqsalose
I throughly enjoyed the webcomic Digger [1]. I didn't realize the author had
so many other works published on the internet and in print. Thank you for this
pointer!

[1] [http://diggercomic.com/](http://diggercomic.com/)

------
rusk
Franz Kafka had similar wishes, that his friend was to destroy all his work. I
can't say I'm "glad" per se that he didn't since such emotions are
antithetical to Kafka, but I suppose it is for the best, culturally that his
friend went ahead and published them ...

I suppose it's a little different given Pratchett's stuff here was
"unfinished" tho Kafka could have argued all his stuff was unfinished too ...

~~~
probably_wrong
I like to compare Kafka to James Joyce.

With Kafka, we got great novels out of the postumous publication. The
publication of Joyce's letters to Nora Barnacle, however, paint him as someone
who "[fastens] intently on peculiarities of sexual behaviour, some of which
might be technically called perverse"[1]. No one has really benefited from
their publication, except perhaps gossip columns.

I think I would stick to the author's desires. As great as Kafka's work is, I
don't think we are "entitled" to them. But I can understand the opposing point
too.

[1] Richard Ellmann, Selected Letters of James Joyce, Introduction, Faber &
Faber, London, 1975

------
Apocryphon
Would this qualify as an addition to this list?

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lost_work](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lost_work)

~~~
jrimbault
I was amazed to not see the handle my scrollbar reduced to a tiny pixel. This
list could be orders of magnitude larger.

~~~
PhasmaFelis
It's on Wikipedia, so get editing! :)

------
inDigiNeous
Well to be honest his more recent books started to be more dull in a way,
although I respect deeply his work, especially with the earlier books, but
maybe the alzheimer started to have an effect also on his writing. I've read
most of his works until Snuff or so, but those 3 - 5 books before that just
really didn't had the same magic anymore, so maybe it's for the best.

~~~
jff
Agreed; 'Raising Steam' made me so sad I couldn't finish it (I thought it was
a much better story when titled 'Making Money', and even better when it was
called 'Going Postal').

~~~
inDigiNeous
Good to hear, Going Postal was still good in my books, sometime I've pondered
should I make an attempt to read those I didn't feel the call to, now I can
assure I have no need to read those.

~~~
jff
Making Money is worth reading, still.

------
orf
That's one way to clear your internet history after you die.

------
ferd_erik
GNU Terry Pratchett

~~~
Loic

        curl -s -D - https://www.ceondo.com -o /dev/null | grep Terry
    

I think we are many fans having this running since 2015.

~~~
pls2halp
There's a list of sites 'broadcasting' over at
[https://www.reddit.com/r/GNUTerryPratchett/](https://www.reddit.com/r/GNUTerryPratchett/)

------
jamiethompson
That's a very old looking HDD. It seems odd that his most recent work would be
on that.

~~~
dspillett
Could easily have been a drive that had been in his main work machine for
quite some time. He no doubt had the good sense to have backups on other local
drives and remote services[1], but this could still be his primary store. It
isn't like holding the text of books in progress is a task that needs the
speediest of SSDs so if that drive just kept working why would he replace it?

[1] presumably these have also been purged if his wishes were so written or
interpreted, probably by more conventional means[2]

[2] the bulldozer being used for this one drive for ceremonial purposes

~~~
johansch
SATA drives replaced IDE drives (which this appears to be) more than ten years
ago, somewhere around 2004-2006.

~~~
dspillett
PATA drives were still common enough ten years ago, maybe not in brand new
machines but certainly in active ones and readily available as
replacements/upgrades. Using a machine from ~10 years ago for document
authoring isn't unusual. A good keyboard screen is more important than the
rest of the machine for that sort of job - you don't need something new,
fancy, & powerful, and many authors _prefer_ an older machine because they
can't run distractions well!

------
forkLding
Terry Pratchett was one of my most favourite authors, it's rare to see someone
keep building up a universe that both my elderly teachers and me as a student
could appreciate during high school. Moreover, I wish there were more movie
adaptations than what they have now.

Also seems so long ago, I used to play Discworld MUD and relive the stories on
there as well. And now Terry has passed away (RIP, hope you're having fun with
Death) and Discworld is off on its own, floating on a turtle somewhere. I have
to be honest, I would read some Discworld fan fiction just to see those
familiar characters again.

------
jmcgough
I respect this a lot - if he hadn't, relatives or others would eventually
publish his unfinished works (either in an unfinished state or completed by
another author). The money is too alluring.

------
SamBam
I'd like to imagine that the steamroller was driven by Nomes.

------
robg
To save you the click - That's what he wanted.

------
paulpauper
i'm sure it could still be recovered through forensic means from the pieces if
one really wanted to

------
lwhalen
pRest pIn Peace, pTerry.

------
WalterBright
My Will specifies that my warp drive design be destroyed. Earthlings are not
ready for it yet.

~~~
WalterBright
That does it. I'm not sharing my Hodge Conjecture solution, either!

------
imchillyb
Damn those Hyperspace bypasses!

~~~
infinite8s
You've got the wrong author. You are thinking of Douglas Adams.

~~~
b4ux1t3
Eh, same vein of humor. I'll allow it.

------
steanne
!!!!!

~~~
steanne
sigh...

[http://wiki.lspace.org/mediawiki/index.php/Multiple_exclamat...](http://wiki.lspace.org/mediawiki/index.php/Multiple_exclamation_marks)

------
ainiriand
If anyone believes that the REAL HD was destroyed then he/she doesn't know how
business work.

PS: I would have destroyed the shit out of that HD.

~~~
mcv
What makes one HD more real than any other? Terry was fairly tech savvy. Would
he not have kept backups?

