When I first saw this headline, for half a second, I thought it said āPresident Pratchettā and I nearly dissolved into messy tears, thinking Iād finally gotten to the smart timelineā¦
This is good, too, though.
Me fucking too! But weāre stuck here, in this stupid timelineā¦
I feel the same way whenever I read Jasper Ffordeās Thursday Next novels, because I want to live in the timeline where George Formby is the President of the UK. President Pterry has a ring to it though.
I am not so sure about a Jack Schitt run version of the world, though.
@anon61221983, Terry was so clever, wasnāt he?
As was Douglas. Both are missed.
(Fforde is quite good, but Iām still waiting for Shades of Grey pt.2, and havenāt had a discovery like him in years.
Any serious suggestions, anyone?)
You could try:
or:
http://jonnynexus.com/2019/03/25/game-night-a-relaunch-for-the-streaming-era/
Jonny has (sadly too few) works in similar veins.
I misread a review a couple of months ago and spent a few blissful hours thinking Shades 2 had been released and Iād missed it, before realizing it hadnāt and wonāt be for some time. Ffordeās work ethic seems more at the Pratchett end than Douglas Adams, but heās apparently committed to new books in a number of series at the same time.
Jane Rawsonās āWrong Turn at the Office of Unmade Listsā is gently surreal, in a āFforde-meets-magical-realismā kind of way.
In Bill Gatesās defence, he was not wrong either. We really can check our sources in a way that usednāt to be possible. Yes, we used to have gatekeepers, but for all that they kept anti-vaxxers and nazis off the air, they also knowingly raised a lot of colorful frauds and hucksters from obscurity. Turmp would be a notable example.
The thing Bill Gates wasnāt cynical enough to see, but Terry Pratchett was, is that the general public doesnāt base its esteem on credentials to begin with, so empowering them to do their own research makes no difference. A large part of the population is trained that if they see something on a screen, by definition, that is what they believe. I think this is much truer of pre-computer generations, and things will gradually improve for that reason; it might actually be that Gates sounds like the more sensible one by 2049.
I wouldnāt think that many readers would agree to the description of Pratchett as cynical.
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