Liverpool University Press is too publish a new study of Terry Pratchett by Andy Sawyer next May. Part of their long-running academic series Writers and Their Work, it’s a critical study of the wide range, development, and thematic complexity of Terry Pratchett, the leading fantasy writer of his time, an inventive humourist who, in the famous phrase, was “occasionally… accused of literature”.
Ranging from the Discworld series to the equally successful (and award-winning) novels for children and the unrelated “stand-alone” novels, Andy’s book examines Pratchett’s work as a whole. It makes particular reference to his position as a “popular” writer in the context of a “fannish” readership attuned to responding to, discussing, and arguing about texts, and the responses from more theoretically-based critics and “literary” readers who came to understand how Pratchett’s inventive comic absurdity highlights fury at unfairness and moral self-deception.
The book, available to preorder, discusses how this allowed him to respond to his audience – or audiences – and to explore how “story” – the narratives we build about ourselves and the world – can be both liberating and shackling. It also investigates Pratchett’s growing maturity and expertise as a writer, which allowed him to play with the conventions and thematics of genre, surpassing the pastiche and parody of his earlier works without dismissing the capability of fantasy and science fiction to foreground morality and ethics.
Andy Sawyer is an Honorary Senior Research Fellow in the Department of English at the University of Liverpool. He was formerly the Science Fiction Collections Librarian at the University of Liverpool Library and Director of the MA in Science Fiction Studies. He retired in 2018.
(The Science Fiction Hub is Europe’s largest catalogued collection of SF material, including the Science Fiction Foundation Collection and a wealth of literary archives).
Recent releases in Liverpool University’s Writers and Their Work Science Fiction Studies series include John Wyndham by David Seed, the first critical study of the work of a formative figure in postwar British science fiction; Play in Utopian and Dystopian Fiction by Matthew Leggatt, a wide-ranging and interdisciplinary study of the different forms of play to be found in depictions of radically better and radically worse societies across literary, filmic, and televisual texts; and the forthcoming Reading Chinese Science Fiction in the Age of Techno-Nationalism by Fontaine Lien.
Terry Pratchett (Writers and Their Work) is available to preorder now | ISBN: 978-1805966883 (Hardcover) |ISBN: 978-1805967217 (Paperback) |eISBN: 978-1805967026 (PDF) |eISBN: 978-1805967163 (ePub) | AmazonUK Affiliate Link
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John is the founder of downthetubes, launched in 1998. He is a comics and magazine editor, writer, and Press Officer for the Lakes International Comic Art Festival. He also runs Crucible Comic Press.
Working in British comics publishing since the 1980s, his credits include editor of titles such as Doctor Who Magazine and Overkill for Marvel UK, Babylon 5 Magazine, Star Trek Magazine, and its successor, Star Trek Explorer, and more. He also edited the comics anthology STRIP Magazine and edited several audio comics for ROK Comics; and has edited several comic collections and graphic novels, including volumes of “Charley’s War” and “Dan Dare”, and Hancock: The Lad Himself, by Stephen Walsh and Keith Page.
He’s the writer of comics such as Pilgrim: Secrets and Lies for B7 Comics; “Crucible”, a creator-owned project with 2000AD artist Smuzz; and “Death Duty” and “Skow Dogs”, with Dave Hailwood.
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