Discworld News just in

[Who's Wee Dug]

JUST FEEGLED from NADWCON on Twitter
http://www.tor.com/blogs/2012/11/terry- ... s-daughter
And more from the New Statesman.

http://www.newstatesman.com/culture/201 ... en-im-gone

[Jan Van Quirm]

In the NS article it also says about Terry having an atrial fibrillation in New York and Rob having to give CPR in the back of a taxi!

Great as it is to know Rhianna will be there to sit down at Terry's writing desk eventually it's really sad to hear about him going downhill now - I thought at the Convention that he seemed a lot frailer than he was in 2010

[Catch-up]

Ohmygosh. Very scary news about the heart attack. So glad he recovered quickly. And way to go Rob!

[Who's Wee Dug]

I hope he will make it Hogwatch this year.

[Tiffany]

Great to hear that, like the Son of Anne McCaffrey, who's carrying on the Pern series, an offspring of Terry's is going to carry on writing the books about the Discworld.

[michelanCello]

I don't know... it's probably me, but it somehow doesn't seem right...

[Tonyblack]

Very scary news about the heart problems.

[Who's Wee Dug]

He does do a lot of running about to various functions and events, even more so now.

[chillicamper]

I don't know if this has been posted elsewhere, but here's a TP interview with Fiona Phillips about Alzheimers.

http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/te ... ps-1434665

Scary news about the atrial fibrillation

[Quatermass]

Very startled to hear about the atrial fibrillation.

As for Terry Pratchett handing things over to his daughter, well, I know she's already a writer, but save for one novella, she's really only written for media other than books, specifically video games. This is one of those things where anything can happen, from being spectacularly bad to being so spectacularly good, she would equal, or even surpass her father. The latter, obviously, is what I hope for. But even then, such a decision isn't going to be free from controversy. I heard that Albert Uderzo's children are objecting to him allowing the continuation of Asterix after he dies, and of course, we have the controversy over Brian Herbert and the new Dune novels.

I hope Terry Pratchett knows what he is doing. It's his decision, of course. And he's still got enough of his faculties left to know that this is one of those 'sound mind' deals.

[pip]

I'll reserve judgement here. As Q said it might just work. If the books are useless i won't read them and if they are great we have a continuation to the series

[KingCarrot]

I wonder if he has been thoroughly tested for chronic lyme disease. Some study I read the other day said that 80% of people with Alzheimer's have lyme spirochetes in their body...

Chronic Lyme Disease is evil, and what's worse is that most doctor's say it doesn't exist after the initial antibiotic treatment for it... unfortunately, it's good at hiding and turns into cysts to avoid treatment.

Obviously I am not saying this is the case, but I am just clutching at straws.

[The Mad Collector]

Bad news about the heart condition, not seen anything about that before. We may well get a pointer as to what Rhianna would be like with the series when The Watch TV programmes are made, but only a pointer as she is just part of the writing team. I'm not sure about her taking over, Tiffany mentioned the Pern books which frankly nosedived in quality when Anne stopped writing them, we can only wait and see and hope that the time when a change comes is still a long way off.

[Quatermass]

Look at it this way: Terry Pratchett can help bring his daughter into Discworld gently, as it should be some time before his faculties go. Okay, the same thing happened with the McCaffreys, and that didn't quite work out, but it has worked before. It's common practice (or was, I dunno) for replacement producers and script editors in the BBC to trail their predecessors in the job for some time to learn what to do. If Rhianna Pratchett loves the Discworld, then that's a good start. She's just got to be unafraid of giving the characters hell if need be.

[KingCarrot]

Look at it this way: Terry Pratchett can help bring his daughter into Discworld gently, as it should be some time before his faculties go. Okay, the same thing happened with the McCaffreys, and that didn't quite work out, but it has worked before. It's common practice (or was, I dunno) for replacement producers and script editors in the BBC to trail their predecessors in the job for some time to learn what to do. If Rhianna Pratchett loves the Discworld, then that's a good start. She's just got to be unafraid of giving the characters hell if need be.

Amen