Cory DoctorowTerry Pratchett
Sir Terry Pratchett (left):
Sir Terry Pratchett's honors include the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, the Boston Globe-Horn Book Award, two Printz
Honors, and ALA’s Margaret A. Edwards Award. His books have sold more than eighty million copies. He lives in England.
Cory Doctorow (right):
Canadian-born Cory Doctorow has held policy positions with Creative Commons and the Electronic Frontier Foundation and
been a Fulbright Fellow at the University of Southern California. He is a co-editor of the popular weblog BoingBoing
(boingboing.net), which receives over three million visitors a month. His science fiction has won numerous awards, and
his YA novel Little Brother spent seven weeks on the New York Times bestseller list.
Cory Doctorow Interview with Author Sir Terry Pratchett
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Cory Doctorow: The Carpet People was your first novel, and now the fortieth book in your Discworld series is about to
be published. Do you think you could have kept us in the Carpet for anything like forty books?
Terry Pratchett: I was about to say, “No,” but right now I wonder. . . . If the idea had taken, I don’t know. I really
don’t. But how would it be? People in the Carpet are more or less tribal. What would happen if I . . . You’ve got me
thinking!
CD: You took a bunch of runs at building a world where a million stories could unfold—The Carpet People, Truckers, and,
finally, Discworld. Is Discworld’s near-total untethering from our world the secret of its staying power?
TP: It isn’t our world, but on the other hand it is very much like our world. Discworld takes something from this world
all the time, shows you bits of the familiar world in new light by putting them into Discworld.
CD: You write a lot of feudal scenarios, but you also seem like a fellow with a lot of sympathy for (and suspicion of!)
majority rule. The Carpet People is through with themes of who should rule and why. Where does legitimate authority
spring from?
TP: The people! The only trouble is the people can be a bit stupid—I know that; I’m one of the people, and I’m quite
stupid.
CD: What should the writer’s relationship with authority be?
TP: My personal view is that you look askance at authority. Authority must be challenged at every step. You challenge
authority to keep it on its toes.
CD: The Carpet People concerns itself with many questions of infrastructure and public works. Now that we’ve arrived at
a time of deep austerity, what do you think the future of infrastructure is?
TP: To crack and fall away, I sometimes think. From what I see around me, it’s people doing it for themselves. We know
the government is there, but we know they have no real power to do anything but mess things up, so you do workarounds.
CD: Ultimately, it comes down to the builders, the wreckers, and the free spirits.
TP: Sometimes things need tearing down—and that might be, as it were, the gates of the city. But if we talk without
metaphors, I would say that building is best. Because it is inherently useful. My dad was a mechanic; maybe it starts
there.
One thing I’ve always enjoyed about your books with feudal settings is that it seems you get something like the correct
ratio of vassals to lords. So much of fantasy seems very top-heavy. Do you consciously think about political and
economic considerations when you’re devising a world?
TP: I’ve never been at home with lords and ladies, kings, and rubbish like that, because it’s not so much fun. Take a
protagonist from the bottom of the heap and they’ve got it all to play for. Whereas people in high places, all they can
do is, well . . . I don’t know, actually: I’ve never been that high. If you have the underdog in front of you, that
means you’re going to have fun, because what the underdog is going to want to do is be the upper dog or be no dog at
all.
CD: Damon Knight once told me that he thought that no matter how good a writer you are, you probably won’t have
anything much to say until you’re about twenty-six (I was twenty at the time). You’ve written about collaborating with
your younger self on the revised text of The Carpet People. Do you feel like seventeen-year-old Terry had much to say?
TP: That’s the best question you’ve asked all day! I think that he had a go at it, and it wasn’t bad, but that when I
was younger I didn’t have the anger. It gives an outlook. And a place from which to stand. When you get out of the
teens, well out of the teens, you begin to have some kind of understanding: you’ve met so many people, heard so many
things, all the bits that growing up means. And out of that lot comes wisdom—it might not be very good wisdom to start
with, but it will be a certain kind of wisdom. It leads to better books.
