It's now been nearly 30 years since The Colour of Magic was published back in 1983. What started as a fairly simple fantasy spoof has now produced 38 books that have become increasingly complex, thoughtful and serious, with several different sequences covering the adventures of an insanely large number of characters and locations. From cowardly wizzard (sic) Rincewind through to world weary copper Sam Vimes via DEATH himself, Terry Pratchett's world has become one of the richest and well characterized in all fiction.
I first encountered the Discworld in the early 90's, sometime around the period between Men At Arms and Soul Music, thanks to the wonders of Kidderminster library. The series was coming up to it's tenth anniversary at this point and the most recent books on the shelves showed an author pretty much at his peak (it's staggering to think that for most of the late 80's and a large chunk of the 90's he was doing two books a year with no decline in quality) and I very quickly became hooked. The comics and audio tapes helped expose me to the early books as well, and by the time I left school in 1998 I was pretty much on top of having my own copies of all the books up till that point. From The Last Continent that same year I even started buying them in hardback as they came out rather than waiting for the paperbacks, which was a fairly steep increase in what I was paying for an unemployed school kid.
I first encountered the Discworld in the early 90's, sometime around the period between Men At Arms and Soul Music, thanks to the wonders of Kidderminster library. The series was coming up to it's tenth anniversary at this point and the most recent books on the shelves showed an author pretty much at his peak (it's staggering to think that for most of the late 80's and a large chunk of the 90's he was doing two books a year with no decline in quality) and I very quickly became hooked. The comics and audio tapes helped expose me to the early books as well, and by the time I left school in 1998 I was pretty much on top of having my own copies of all the books up till that point. From The Last Continent that same year I even started buying them in hardback as they came out rather than waiting for the paperbacks, which was a fairly steep increase in what I was paying for an unemployed school kid.
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