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I re-read Eric recently, and while it's not great, it's incredibly light and short. And it's pretty funny. Chewing through moving pictures at the moment, and yes, I think Pratchett was looking for Steampunk and landed on Flintstones. Doing this re-read though, I find the early rough sketches of characters (Ridcully and the Bursar) fascinating for what he later tones down, tunes up and pares away. Come on though, that opening "foreign words for discovering something" conversation is gold, and Dibbler getting to take centre stage is a joy as well. Also, Thief of Time is incredible (haven't read it in about 6 years, but...), people don't like that one? Really?
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Jun 17, 2011 00:31
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Sophia posted:Gaspode is pretty great, but the main human characters (Victor? Sally?) really irritated me. I'm not really sure what it was about it but I didn't even really remember chuckling at it that much. Even the wizards weren't very funny. It could be that I'm not a film buff; I'd never thought about that angle! If it helps, try and imagine Victor as Clark Gable and Sally as Betty Page. Worked for me. I may not like the animation styles from the Soul Music film but the music makes up for it.
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Jun 17, 2011 00:37
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Vengeance of Pandas posted:The first version of Eric I ever read was like the Last Hero, an illustrated novel that my local library had a copy of about fifteen years back. Not my favourite Discworld book, in fact at times it read more like Tom Holt if I'm being completely honest but the illustrations were kind of fun though if you hate the Kirby covers then you're not going to dig it. Yeah, that was the original printing of Eric. That's why the current novelized version is so short; it's missing all the Kirby illustrations, like reading Last Hero without the pictures. It's long out of print now. 
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Jun 17, 2011 00:50
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Mister Roboto posted:Yeah, that was the original printing of Eric. That's why the current novelized version is so short; it's missing all the Kirby illustrations, like reading Last Hero without the pictures. Is this not it?
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Jun 17, 2011 02:17
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Mister Roboto posted:Yeah, that was the original printing of Eric. That's why the current novelized version is so short; it's missing all the Kirby illustrations, like reading Last Hero without the pictures. I've got a copy of this original version; I can throw a few scans of the art up if anyone's interested.
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Jun 17, 2011 19:41
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Dead Alice posted:Is this not it? Oh hey, they finally re-released it.
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Jun 17, 2011 20:02
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Anyone else find it oddly comforting the L-Space website has looked the same for over a decade now?
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Jun 17, 2011 20:30
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Sanford posted:I've got a copy of this original version; I can throw a few scans of the art up if anyone's interested. Yes, please! Been wondering for a while now.
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Jun 18, 2011 01:02
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Is it as large as the original last hero, or the size of the reprint?
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Jun 18, 2011 02:04
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SeanBeansShako posted:Anyone else find it oddly comforting the L-Space website has looked the same for over a decade now? need to update the annotated discworld though (USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST)
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Jun 18, 2011 08:49
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Ika posted:Is it as large as the original last hero, or the size of the reprint? Off the top of my head I'd say it's the size of The Last Hero, but it is at my parent's house so I can't check. I'll pick it up next time I'm over there.
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Jun 18, 2011 17:09
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Some pictures from the illustrated version of Eric. Apologies for the shoddy quality; I fully intended to set up my scanner for these but I had surgery a couple of days ago and turns out I wasn't up to it. This is all the art from the first half of the book.         I'll get pics of the second half too if people want to see them. Sanford fucked around with this message at 15:43 on Jun 19, 2011 |
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Jun 19, 2011 15:26
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I just finished Reaper Man, and I still don't understand what was going on in the B-story. The snowglobes were eggs that hatched into shopping carts, and formed a mall in order to steal the people away from the city? Where did they come from? Did they have anything to do with Death being fired?
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Jun 20, 2011 19:29
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Sanford posted:I'll get pics of the second half too if people want to see them. Wow, that's great! Thanks for that. I'd love to see more. SlothfulCobra posted:I just finished Reaper Man, and I still don't understand what was going on in the B-story. The snowglobes were eggs that hatched into shopping carts, and formed a mall in order to steal the people away from the city? Where did they come from? Did they have anything to do with Death being fired? Possibly related to the idea that without death, there is too much life, and not all life forms are friendly towards humans.
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Jun 20, 2011 19:34
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Yeah, I always thought of it as, with Death retired, there was a sudden surge in "life force" on Discworld, attracting a parasitic organism to the planet to feed off of it along with all of the other hijinks that occur in the book. But the plot definitely doesn't hold together as well as some of the other books, in retrospect.
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Jun 20, 2011 19:41
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Mister Roboto posted:Wow, that's great! Thanks for that. I'd love to see more. The B story in Reaper Man is just there for pacing and so the Bill Door parts don't crush your mind with pure awesomeness. It coulda been anything, it's just there to space out the good stuff. Yo.
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Jun 20, 2011 19:46
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The mall story was kind of crap but the Wizards made up for it.
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Jun 20, 2011 20:30
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mllaneza posted:The B story in Reaper Man is just there for pacing and so the Bill Door parts don't crush your mind with pure awesomeness. It coulda been anything, it's just there to space out the good stuff. Hut hut.
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Jun 20, 2011 21:18
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Ho! The megapode.I'll be honest. That line tickled me the right way.
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Jun 20, 2011 21:36
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Speaking of
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Jun 21, 2011 06:19
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I think Last Hero would be unreadable without the pictures, as odd as that sentence is.
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Jun 21, 2011 08:58
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I read both Eric and The Last Hero without pictures. Eric is fine, I didn't even know there was an illustrated edition when I read it. It might be better with pictures, but it's a fine book without. The Last Hero, not so much. The story's fine, but it loses a lot of flavor without the pictures (which are gorgeous).
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Jun 21, 2011 10:11
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AlphaDog posted:I read both Eric and The Last Hero without pictures. It might have been better with pictures if they weren't done by Josh Kirby.
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Jun 21, 2011 13:42
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The_Doctor posted:Oh hey, they finally re-released it. So is it worth the $42.75 Amazon wants for it?
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Jun 21, 2011 16:53
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fordan posted:So is it worth the $42.75 Amazon wants for it? Not really. Mine cost 75p from a car boot sale.         That's everything.
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Jun 21, 2011 17:17
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why is eric 40 why is rincewind 70 why is astfgl a goblin why is everyone made out of molten butter
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Jun 22, 2011 00:41
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jfjnpxmy posted:why is eric 40 why is rincewind 70 why is astfgl a goblin why is everyone made out of molten butter Terry Pratchetts older artist, Josh Kirby did this one.
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Jun 22, 2011 01:01
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I'll trade a mint copy of The Last Hero for a copy of The Illustrated Eric. 
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Jun 22, 2011 02:38
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My copy of Night Watch is missing the last few pages. I've read it like a thousand times so I know what happens but it'd be nice to properly finish it. Is there someplace I can just like, read a few pages of it or not?
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Jun 22, 2011 13:38
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AXE COP posted:My copy of Night Watch is missing the last few pages. I've read it like a thousand times so I know what happens but it'd be nice to properly finish it. Is there someplace I can just like, read a few pages of it or not? The library?
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Jun 22, 2011 16:42
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I have a question about the Discworld Dairies, is all the art from them included in either the Pratchet Portfolio or the Art of Discworld? I really dig Paul Kidby's art and would like to see pretty much everything he's ever had published. It there is stuff not in one of those two can someone here let me know what I'm missing?
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Jun 22, 2011 17:03
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SeanBeansShako posted:Terry Pratchetts older artist, Josh Kirby did this one. I know I'm in the minority, and I can see why he wasn't to everyone's taste, but I always loved Kirby's discworld work. His compositions were amazing, and the sense of writhing, seething, chaotic, grubby matter really fit the feel of the setting for me, especially with the early books. Kidby is good too - I like his sketches - but his finished work is very bland by comparison. The cover for Snuff looks good and I'm glad he's branching out beyond "bird's-eye view of central characters warmly lit against black." but I'll always prefer Kirby's fevered nightmare-scapes, with their warty melty witches and crusty yellow trolls and insane amounts of background detail. 
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Jun 22, 2011 17:19
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Kismet posted:I know I'm in the minority, and I can see why he wasn't to everyone's taste, but I always loved Kirby's discworld work. His compositions were amazing, and the sense of writhing, seething, chaotic, grubby matter really fit the feel of the setting for me, especially with the early books.
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Jun 22, 2011 17:52
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Kismet posted:I know I'm in the minority, and I can see why he wasn't to everyone's taste, but I always loved Kirby's discworld work. His compositions were amazing, and the sense of writhing, seething, chaotic, grubby matter really fit the feel of the setting for me, especially with the early books. Kidby is good too - I like his sketches - but his finished work is very bland by comparison. The cover for Snuff looks good and I'm glad he's branching out beyond "bird's-eye view of central characters warmly lit against black." but I'll always prefer Kirby's fevered nightmare-scapes, with their warty melty witches and crusty yellow trolls and insane amounts of background detail. Kirby's pictures were more fantastical, but In my opinion, there are few better front pages better than the Night Watch, paying homage to Rembrandt, or The Science of Discworld, with the wizards inserted into An Experiment on a Bird in the Air Pump. Those are really fantastic!
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Jun 22, 2011 18:01
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^^^ Yeah, those are great covers. Part of the reason I'm glad to see Kidby breaking out of his formula again for Snuff, he can be really good in his own ways.Alhazred posted:The sense of things like anatomy isn't that great though. It's exaggerated and stylised to match the crazy flow of the images, but it isn't terrible. If you look at some of his non-discworld art, it's clear the guy knew what he was doing.   Kirby was a badass.
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Jun 22, 2011 18:12
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Kismet posted:I know I'm in the minority, and I can see why he wasn't to everyone's taste, but I always loved Kirby's discworld work. His compositions were amazing, and the sense of writhing, seething, chaotic, grubby matter really fit the feel of the setting for me, especially with the early books. Kidby is good too - I like his sketches - but his finished work is very bland by comparison. The cover for Snuff looks good and I'm glad he's branching out beyond "bird's-eye view of central characters warmly lit against black." but I'll always prefer Kirby's fevered nightmare-scapes, with their warty melty witches and crusty yellow trolls and insane amounts of background detail. I kind of agree, Kidby is a better artist, but Kirby's stuff is so weird its hard not to love it, I even like that he totally missed the joke of Twoflower being foureyed. I bought my first DW book (Soul Music) when I was maybe 13 and Im not sure I would have picked it up if not for the cover art, although that probably says more about 13 year old me than Kirby. 
Dirty Frank fucked around with this message at 22:50 on Jun 22, 2011 |
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Jun 22, 2011 21:47
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Best part of rereading the entire series in order without really being sure what the next book is? When you finish The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents and realise the next book is the loving Night Watch.
thebardyspoon fucked around with this message at 22:48 on Jun 22, 2011 |
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Jun 22, 2011 22:08
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I'm going to have to read Night Watch again now, I think it's my favourite, but it's been a while. On the Kirby vs. Kidby cover art thing. I think I love them both. Kidby's art fits the newer books because it looks like it might be something a contemporary new era discworld artist might paint. But at the same time I like the Kirby messy fantasy style which fits the old books really well too. I remember the first time I looked at a Kirby book cover properly and noticed that it's more than just a complete mess of strangely shaped foreground characters but there's loads of little details thrown in too. I'm far away from being any sort of art appreciative person, but I love the way Kirby's foreground characters are sort of broadly laid out in a mess but the little background things seem over detailed. I guess it fits Pratchett's early fantasy parody quite well in a things are a bit inside out sort of way.
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Jun 22, 2011 22:33
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Night Watch is great but Small Gods will always be my favorite (despite the last quarter of the book being unnecessary). In fact, of The Watch books, I might even like The Fifth Elephant better than Night Watch, though I wouldn't be able to easily describe why. It might be that Carrot is at his most fully articulated there, and that the Night Watch fellow coppers aren't as much fun as the ones I came to love in the earlier books.
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Jun 22, 2011 23:36
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Small Gods is almost in a class by itself; it doesn't really feel fair to discuss it with the other Discworld books. I'm not sure right now if I'd call it my favorite, though I probably would, but I'd have absolutely no hesitation in calling it the best if the concept of quality divorced from my own enjoyment really makes much sense. As for the others, hmm. Thief of Time, Jingo, Fifth Elephant, Night Watch, and Witches Abroad would be in some order a non-Small Gods top five for me that likely would change in order from mood to mood. Each and every one has a Scene that just is incredible; Vimes' monologue to Carcer after catching him, Vetinari and the Minaret, "Find the one that is real."... mmm.
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Jun 23, 2011 16:16
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