Pratchat - a Terry Pratchett and Discworld book club

Writer, filmmaker and creative director Lucas Testro joins Liz and Ben on a trip down under to the Other Place as we discuss Terry Pratchett’s first ever published short story, 1963’s “The Hades Business”. Shady advertising man Crucible arrives home to find none other than old Nicholas Lucifer waiting for him in his study. But he hasn’t come to take him to eternal damnation. Instead, the Devil has a business proposition for Crucible: he want to make the public conscious, Hell-wise… At age thirteen (actually fourteen), the young Pratchett scored full marks for this story as a school assignment, encouraging him to try his luck with the editor of his three favourite spec fic magazines. And it worked! As the legend goes, he used the whopping £14 he was paid for the story to buy his first typewriter, and the rest is history…with a few bumps and detours along the way, of course. Was the young Pratchett a genius? Do you know any fourteen-year-olds who’ve been published alongside Michael Moorcock and Harry Harrison? Are we way too harsh on a story written by a teenager, or is it fair game as an exercise in working where the author of Night Watch and Nation got his start? And what afterlife would you sell – and with what slogan? Get down with this episode’s conversation using the infernal hashtag #Pratchat77. Lucas Testro (he/him) is writer, filmmaker and creative director based in Melbourne. He’s worked in theatre, television and short film, including the time travel farce I’m You, Dickhead and superhero comedy Capes. He’s worked in a variety of capacities with youth creative writing centre 100 Story Building. In 2022 he founded Social Storylab, a media production house that seeks to use persuasive marketing techniques for social good. (He’s kind of the anti-Crucible.) You can find Lucas online at manwithajetpack.com, and his excellent three-part audio documentary about mysterious Doctor Who writer Donald Cotton is available via donaldcotton.com or to stream on Soundcloud. As usual you’ll find comprehensive notes and errata for this episode on our website. Next episode we finish a long-term goal: the end of the Long Earth series, with the fifth and final novel, The Long Cosmos! We’ll be joined by previous Steppers Joel Martin and Deanne Sheldon-Collins. Get your questions in by ASAP using the hashtag #Pratchat78 on social media, or email us at chat@pratchatpodcast.com. Want to help us get to the end of our six(ish) year mission and read every Pratchett book – and more? You can support us with a tip, or a subscription for as little as $2 a month, and that’s cuttin’ our own throats! See our Support Us page for details.

It’s the 25th of May, which can only mean one thing: Geek Pride Day! Or Towel Day. Or the Glorious 25th of May and the Battle of Treacle Mine Road…okay, that’s three things. Why not add one more? This is the Pratchat Eeek Club: a bonus episode discussing Terry Pratchett-related topics selected by our “Eeek” tier subscribers. This year, the topics are: So it’s been a few years of the Podcast. How are you guys holding up? How could one Discworld character use their skills and influence to change the patriarchal nature of the Disc? What is an unwritten Discworld story for you, e.g. maybe a head canon of a specific character, or a general arc of how things came into being or changed on the Disc? Why no gays? (On the Discworld.) Like learning how to not use magic is the whole point of magic, what have you had to learn not to do to make your life easier/better? What other storylines – other than The Watch – would you like to see turned into a television show? A big thank you to all our subscribers for making Pratchat possible, but especially to this year’s Eeek Club contributors: Graham, Karl, Jing, the Caths, Jess and Ellie, Stephanie, Nathan and those we didn’t hear from. You’ll find notes and errata for this episode on our website. Want to make sure we get through every Pratchett book – or even choose a topic for next year’s Eeek Club? You can support Pratchat by subscribing for as little as $2 a month and get access to bonus stuff, including the exclusive supporter podcast Ook Club! Click here to find out more.

The scheduling goblins got us this month, and we’ve had to delay our planned short story episode. But while we get that sorted out, Ben’s embracing the chaos – and the theme of Terry Pratchett Day 2024, “Start in the Wrong Place”! Join him as he shares some of your stories of unusual places to start reading Pratchett. If you’d like to honour Terry, you can find a list of his preferred charities (and a recipe for banana daiquiris) at the Terry Pratchett Day page at terrypratchettbooks.com. If you’d like to hear us discuss any of the Terry Pratchett books mentioned this episode, you can find our episodes in our handy list, or this list by book. Or use the Guild of Recappers and Podcasters, where you’ll also find Dining Table Discworld, and the “Starting in the Wrong Place” episode of The Truth Shall Make Ye Fret, which Ben can’t believe he forgot to mention during this episode. You can find the threads of responses at the links below, and add to them by replying, or using the hashtag #PratchatDay2024. Use #TerryPratchettDay as well to really get into the spirit of things! (Note that on several of these platforms you’ll need to be logged in to see some of the responses. Reddit and Twitter had the most if you don’t want to visit them all.) Our Reddit post on r/discworld The Twitter thread (yes, we still refuse to call it “X”) Our Instagram post Our Facebook post The Bluesky thread The Mastodon post We’ll be back next month on the 7Ath; keep an eye on our social media for confirmation of the next book or story, though also listen out in the feed for something before then! Want to help us get to the end of our six(ish) year mission and read every Pratchett book – and more? You can support us with a tip, or a subscription for as little as $2 a month, and that’s cuttin’ our own throats! See our Support Us page for details.

Kiwi writer and poet Freya Daly Sadgrove joins Liz and Ben from Sydney as we adjust our uniforms and march into the horrible realities of war (class, gender and literal) to discuss Terry Pratchett’s thirty-first Discworld novel, 2003’s Monstrous Regiment. Polly Perks has cut off her hair, put on some trousers and joined the army under the name of Oliver, all so she can find her strong but gentle-minded brother, Paul. Is soon turns out that her regiment, led by the infamous Sergeant Jackrum who swears to look after “his little lads”, is quite possibly the last one left in all of Borogravia. In her search for Paul, Polly will have to deal with the enemy, the free press, a vampire who might kill for a coffee, Sam Vimes, and The Secret: she might not be the only impostor in the ranks… Coming in between the first two Tiffany Aching novels, Monstrous Regiment – which is also monstrous in size, possibly Pratchett’s second longest novel – is the last truly standalone Discworld story. It introduces a wonderful cast of characters who, sadly, we’ll never see again. Not only that, but it gives major supporting roles to old favourites Sam Vimes and William de Worde, with a side order of Otto von Chriek! Critics at the time compared it to Evelyn Waugh, Jonathan Swift and All Quiet on the Western Front, and it remains one of Pratchett’s most beloved and celebrated novels – both for what it says about war, and about gender. Did you know The Secret before you read Monstrous Regiment? What’s it like re-reading it when you do know? How do you feel about the ending(s)? How does Pratchett’s handling of gender hold up against our modern understanding? What would you prohibit, in Nugganite fashion? And would you rather have a type of food or clothing named after you? Get on board the conversation for this episode with the hashtag #Pratchat76. Freya Daly Sadgrove (she/her) is a pākehā writer and performance poet from New Zealand, currently living in Sydney. Her first book of poetry, Head Girl, was published in 2020 by Te Herenga Waka University Press, and she is one of the creators of New Zealand live poetry showcase Show Ponies, which presents poets like they’re pop stars. Her first full-length live show, 2023’s Whole New Woman, blended poetry with live rock music. Freya has a website at freyadalysad.com (though it might not be available at the moment), and you can also find her as @FreyaDalySad on Twitter. As usual you’ll find comprehensive notes and errata for this episode on our website, including lots of photos of the components we discuss. Next episode we’re discussing two short stories about animals: “Hollywood Chickens” (found in A Blink of the Screen) and “From the Horse’s Mouth” (from A Stroke of the Pen). Our guest will be the author of The Animals in That Country, Laura Jean McKay. Get your questions in by mid-April 2024 by replying to us or using the hashtag #Pratchat77 on social media, or email us at chat@pratchatpodcast.com. Want to help us get to the end of our six(ish) year mission and read every Pratchett book – and more? You can support us with a tip, or a subscription for as little as $2 a month, and that’s cuttin’ our own throats! See our Support Us page for details.

Our Monstrous Regiment episode still isn’t quite ready, so we’ve had to push it to April. In the meantime, Ben gets nerdy about some recent Discworld and Pratchett news about books and roleplaying games. A few brief notes: “50 Years of Terry Pratchett” was actually announced in November 2021, marking fifty years since the publication of The Carpet People in 1971. (In Ben’s defence, those early pandemic years all blur into one.) It kicked off with a new print and audiobook edition of that book; the new audio version was read by David Tennant! The new Discworld audiobooks and paperbacks from Penguin were published between 2022 and 2023, though the audiobook of Hogfather was released early for Christmas 2021, using the same artwork as the 25th anniversary paperback edition. For more on the books released as part of 50th anniversary celebrations, see the L-Space wiki “50 Years of Terry” article. You can check out the cover design for the new edition of The Last Hero on the Gollancz website. The new paperback edition of Eric was published on 23 February 2023. The new audiobook, read by Colin Morgan, had been previously released with the other Wizards books on 7 July 2022. The Collector’s Library edition of Dodger can be seen in the terrypratchett.com announcement. You can see the “Forty Years of Discworld” logo at terrypratchett.com. The “Year of Discworld” was announced on the day of the fortieth anniversary, promising “more on that soon”. Both the terrypratchett.com announcement and Modiphius announcement for Terry Pratchett’s Discworld: Adventure in Ankh-Morpork include links to Modiphius’ fan survey (it’s a Google form). Modiphius also has a mailing list you can sign up to for more news. Ben forgot to mention this, but Modiphius’ license is for Discworld “tabletop games”, including board games. No news on those yet, though! We’ll be back with #Pratchat76, our proper Monstrous Regiment episode on 8 April. Then in May we’ll be reading “Hollywood Chickens” (which you can find in A Blink of the Screen) and “From the Horse’s Mouth” (from A Stroke of the Pen, or in earlier form as “Johnno, The Talking Horse” in The Time Traveling Caveman and Other Stories) with guest Laura Jean McKay. Send in your questions about those stories via email, or using the hashtag #Pratchat77 on social media. Want to help us get to the end of our six(ish) year mission and read every Pratchett book – and more? You can support us with a tip, or a subscription for as little as $2 a month, and that’s cuttin’ our own throats! See our Support Us page for details.

Our Monstrous Regiment episode won’t be ready until later in the month, but we didn’t want to let International Women’s Day pass without some kind of comment. So here’s a mini episode in your feed recommending some other Pratchett and Discworld podcasts hosted by women and non-binary folks. Here’s a list of the Discworld podcasts Ben mentioned: The Truth Shall Make Ye Fret, hosted by Francine Carrel and Joanna Hagan. They covered Monstrous Regiment over three episodes in April 2023: “[REDACTED]”, “The Implication of Hippo” and “Gender is a Fake Drug”. You can support them on Patreon. Disc Coverers, hosted by Iris Jay, Grace Lovelace, Balina Mahigan, and Juniper Theory. Nanny Ogg’s Book Club, hosted by Tessa Swelha and Nigel. Their Monstrous Regiment episode was in September 2023. Teaching My Cat to Read, hosted by Eli, M, Ro and Lotti. You can support them on Ko-Fi. Fiction Fans, hosted by Sara and Lily. You can support them on Patreon. Other links from this episode: Our wiki indexing Discworld podcasts is the Guild of Recappers and Podcasters. There’s a page for Monstrous Regiment listing all the episodes discussing it. The Melbourne-based charity is independent feminist organisation the Victorian Women’s Trust. They’ve produced their own podcasts, including Money Power Freedom, which was co-hosted by Cal Wilson. We won’t link to it, but don’t go to internationalwomensday.com; instead you want the official UN Women site, unwomen.org. Our April episode, #Pratchat77, will be with guest Laura Jean McKay, author of The Animals in That Country. We’ll be discussing the short stories “Hollywood Chickens” from A Blink of the Screen, and “From the Horse’s Mouth” from A Stroke of the Pen. An earlier version of “From the Horse’s Mouth” is “Johnno, the Talking Horse”, which was collected in The Time-Travelling Caveman and Other Stories, and in deluxe editions of The Witch’s Vacuum Cleaner and Other Stories.

In this very three-quarters-of-a-century episode, Liz, Ben and guest Dr Melissa Rogerson get out the eight-sided dice and roll for initative – or at least cunning – as we play the 2011 board game, Guards! Guards!, designed by Leonard Boyd and David Brashaw, and based on the Discworld novels by Terry Pratchett. The eight great spells have escaped from Unseen University’s library, ready to unleash chaos on Ankh-Morpork! Thankfully Commander Vimes has taken charge. He’s assigned members of the Watch (that’s you) to liaise with four of the Guilds to round up volunteers and bring those spells back. But Guild rivalries run deep, and surely the Patrician will look kindly on whoever saves the day the most. So if one of the other Guilds’ volunteers should go missing or explode or fall into the Ankh, your Guild would only be too willing to shoulder more of the burden of saving the city… Created by two Irish Discworld fans who approached Terry with the idea (see David Brashaw’s great interview with The Truth Shall Make Ye Fret), Guards! Guards! A Discworld Board Game sees players roaming about a hexagon-based map of Ankh-Morpork collecting Discworld characters, casting spells from scrolls, equipping magic items and occasionally fighting dragons. Which sounds suspiciously like a very different kind of game… Originally published in 2011 by BackSpindle Games and Z-Man Games, and reprinted with a revised rulebook in 2012, Guards! Guards! was a hit with fans – but board game hobbyists were less enthusiastic. Have you played Guards! Guards! – and if so, how long did it take you? Do you like the kind of game where being mean to the other players is part of the fun? Do you think it captures the essence of the source material, and if so, which books in particular? Is this the best name for the game, or do you have a better suggestion? (Ours was Guilds! Guilds!) And should we play an exhibition match at the Australian Discworld Convention, of this or one of the other games? We’d love to hear what you think: use the hashtag #Pratchat75 to join the conversation. Dr Melissa Rogerson is a Lecturer and Assistant Professor in the School of Computing and Information Systems at The University of Melbourne. She was last on for #PratchatPlaysThud, “The Troll’s Gambit”, discussing the first Discworld board game in Nivember 2022. Melissa’s current research is about hybrid games which use both physical and digital components, as well as the possibility of using games to tell the stories of older people. You can find out more about her work at hybridgameresearch.net, melissarogerson.com, or find her on Twitter and Mastodon as @melissainau, and on BoardGameGeek as melissa. (A mentioned last time, Ben is on there too, as beejay.) As usual you’ll find comprehensive notes and errata for this episode on our website, including lots of photos of the components we discuss. Next episode we’ll be discussing a Discworld novel for the first time in ages – and not just any Discworld novel, but one of the most beloved! Yes, for #Pratchat76 we’re finally talking about Monstrous Regiment. Get your questions in before the last week of February to give them a chance of getting on the show! Use the hashtag on social media (Mastodon, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and BlueSky), or email us at chat@pratchatpodcast.com. Want to help us get to the end of our six(ish) year mission and read every Pratchett book – and more? You can support us with a tip, or a subscription for as little as $2 a month, and that’s cuttin’ our own throats! See our Support Us page for details.

In this very special Hogswatch-adjacent episode of Pratchat, Liz and Ben don’t discuss a Terry Pratchett book! Instead, they interview Rhianna Pratchett and Gabrielle Kent, authors of Tiffany Aching’s Guide to Being a Witch. Tiffany Aching’s Guide to Being a Witch is a new lavishly illustrated guidebook to witchcraft, compiled by the famous young witch of the Chalk – with a little help from her friends, of course. Granny Weatherwax, Nanny Ogg, Miss Tick, Mrs Letice Earwig and more have all annotated the manuscript – as have Tiffany’s fairy allies and protectors, the Nac Mac Feegle. We’ll return to the book for a regular discussion in a future episode, but for now, please enjoy our chat with Rhianna and Gabrielle – though note that as Tiffany Aching’s Guide is set after The Shepherd’s Crown, you might catch a couple of brief spoilers for the final Discworld novel in this interview. The same is true for their previous appearances on our spiritual sibling podcasts, The Truth Shall Make Ye Fret and The Compleat Discography, which you will probably also enjoy. You can send us comments and questions about this episode using the hashtag #Pratchat74. And as usual you can find errata and other notes for this episode on our website. Guest Rhianna Pratchett is a writer best known for her work in videogames, most famously the 2013 reboot of Tomb Raider, and most recently Lost Words: Beyond the Page with Sketchbook Games. Rhianna also works in film and television production, and since 2012 has co-run Narrativia, the company which manages Terry Pratchett’s intellectual property. Rhianna recently made her first podcast series, Mythical Creatures, for BBC Radio 4; find it via your favourite podcast app, or on the BBC Sounds website. You can also follow Rhianna on social media at @rhipratchett on Twitter and Mastodon, and as @rhi.bsky.social on Bluesky. Guest Gabrielle Kent is now best known as a children’s author, but worked in videogames as an artist and lecturer for many years. Her books include the Knights and Bikes series based on the videogame of the same name; the Alfie Bloom series about a boy who inherits a magical castle; and most recently Rani Reports, a series about a young aspiring journalist, co-written with her husband Satish Shewhorak. You can find out more about Gabrielle via her website, gabriellekent.com. Gabrielle is also on social media as @gabriellekent on Twitter and Bluesky. Next month we get our game one again as we play and discuss the second published Discworld board game, Guards! Guards!, designed by Leonard Boyd and David Brashaw of BackSpindle Games. Get your questions in via social media using the hashtag #Pratchat75, or send us an email at chat@pratchatpodcast.com. Want to help us get to the end of our six(ish) year mission and read every Pratchett book – and more? You can support us with a tip, or a subscription for as little as $2 a month, and that’s cuttin’ our own throats! See our Support Us page for details.

In this very special Christmas episode, Liz and Ben fly without a guest as they turn the seasonal silliness up to maximum and discuss all eleven stories in Terry Pratchett’s 2017 collection of short Christmas stories, Father Christmas’s Fake Beard. It’s not always easy being Father Christmas. You might be forced out of home by a rogue submarine or the harsh reality of a job where you only work one day a year; you might be sent fifty thousand identical letters by a computer or put on trial for three thousand counts of breaking and entering. But at least you don’t live in Blackbury, where giant pies explode, the snow falls so thick you have to dig tunnels to see your granny, and where weird creatures show up every other day. And you won’t believe the true stories behind some of your favourite Christmas songs… While he later claimed short stories “cost me blood”, Pratchett wrote scores of stories every year while working in his first newspaper jobs between 1965 and 1979, and continued to sell them to his old papers even after he went to work for the Central Electricity Governing Board. These included plenty of Christmas stories – and eleven of them (well…eight plus three wintery ring-ins) from between 1967 and 1992 are collected in this third volume of his early work for children. Have you read Father Christmas’s Fake Beard? Is “Father Christmas” more British than Santa Claus? Do you prefer these (close to) original versions of the stories, or some of the later re-written versions unearthed for A Stroke of the Pen? Have you ever seen one of these stories in their original habitat, the Southwestern British Newspaper? And what should we name our Prod-Ye-A’Diddle Oh team? Join in the conversation on social media using the hashtag #Pratchat73! “Guest” Elizabeth Flux is a freelance writer and editor, and also currently Arts Editor for The Age newspaper in Melbourne. You can find out where Liz’s short fiction has been published via her website, elizabethflux.com. “Guest” Ben McKenzie is a writer, game designer and educator who doesn’t usually work in short fiction. But you can find a few short Twine games on his website, benmckenzie.com.au. As usual, you can find notes and errata for this episode on our website. Next episode we have two actual very special guests: Rhianna Pratchett and Gabrielle Kent! They’re joining us for a chat about their new book, Tiffany Aching’s Guide to Being a Witch. This will be more an interview than an in-depth discussion about the book (which, we feel we should warn you, include spoilers for some key events and characters for The Shepherd’s Crown, but we’ll try to keep those spoilers to a minimum). As well as asking our own questions, we want to ask them yours! So send them in using the hashtag #Pratchat74 or via email to chat@pratchatpodcast.com, but be quick: we’ll be recording on the 15th of December! Want to help us get to the end of our six(ish) year mission and read every Pratchett book – and more? You can support us with a tip, or a subscription for as little as $2 a month, and that’s cuttin’ our own throats! See our Support Us page for details.

24 November 2023 marks forty years since Terry Pratchett’s The Colour of Magic was first published. That’s right – it’s Discworld’s fortieth birthday! To celebrate, join Pratchat producer and co-host Ben McKenzie as he – and a bunch of special guests – try to figure out why that book, and moreso the Discworld series it started, have endured for so long. This episode is something of an experiment for Pratchat, and as Ben says during the episode, this can’t possibly cover all the reasons why the series is so beloved. We want to hear about your favourite Discworld books, and what the Discworld means to you. And we’d love to know what you thought of this episode, and whether you’d like to hear more like it in the future! Tell us via the hashtag #PratchatRuby on social media, or get in touch via email or our subscriber Discord. Huge thanks to everyone who contributed to this episode: Rachel and Jason of the newsletter Better Than a Poke in the Eye (previously known as Discworld Monthly). You can read their thoughts on the fortieth anniversary here: “Celebrating 40 years of Terry Pratchett’s The Colour of Magic”. Marc Burrows, author of The Magic of Terry Pratchett and creator of the one-man stage show of the same name. Marc is also the guest host for the final episode of Desert Island Discworld, also released on the fortieth anniversary. (Note that it’s about The Shepherd’s Crown.) Adam Ford, poet. Find his zines in his Gumroad shop. Danny (aka Molokov) from Nullus Anxietas, the Australian Discworld Convention. The next one is in Adelaide in July 2024. Hopefully we’ll be there! Ian Banks. Aaron from The Compleat Discography podcast. Pratchat’s own Elizabeth Flux. Francine Carrel and Joanna Hagan of The Truth Shall Make Ye Fret. We appeared on their recent episode “Picture Books and Board Games” talking about Where’s My Cow? and the Discworld board games; it also includes an interview with David Brashaw of Backspindle Games. Our original discussion of The Colour of Magic can be found in #Pratchat14, “City-State Lampoon’s Disc-Wide Vacation”, from December 2018. Our December episode will be #Pratchat73, discussing the stories of Father Christmas’s Fake Beard. But we are hoping to bring you one more little extra before the year is out. Want to help us get to every Pratchett book? You can subscribe for as little as $2 a month – and that’s cuttin’ our own throats! (Sorry.) Check out our Support Us page for details. Want to help us get to the end of our six(ish) year mission and read every Pratchett book – and more? You can support us with a tip, or a subscription for as little as $2 a month, and that’s cuttin’ our own throats! See our Support Us page for details.