#PratchatBlast – The First News Blast

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.

#PratchatIWD – A Monstrous Delay

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:

Other links from this episode:

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.