Terry Pratchett: Not really. Pretty much everything I've written got published. 

Crescent Blues: Was everything written in your famous comic style or were there any experiments? 

Terry Pratchett: There are a handful of short stories I wrote in my teens, which are in about every style you can imagine! 

Crescent Blues: Some of your Discworld books are obvious parodies or satires of other works, e.g. Macbeth, Phantom of the Opera. What would you say are the differences between writing this sort of novel and one that isn't based on something else? 

Terry Pratchett: There aren't many "full" parodies as such. There's some Macbeth in Wyrd Sisters, and some Midsummer Night's Dream in Lords and Ladies, but in both books they're mixed up with other things as well. I look upon the parody structure as a vehicle for other things. 

The only book squarely based on something else was Maskerade, which was based not just on the book AND the musical AND the movie but also on people's perceptions of them. It wasn't hard to do -- it's not a very complex plot. But none of the books is a parody in the sense that, say, Bored of the Rings was a parody of The Lord of the Rings. I prefer the term "resonance." [Smiles] Put Discworld people in, say, a movie-making setting and they'll resonate with every Hollywood cliché that ever was. 

Crescent Blues: The way Discworld resonates with cliches is a major factor in the humor of your novels. One of the funniest plays on cliches I remember was, I believe, in an earlier novel -- The Colour of Magic or The Light Fantastic. It's where Rincewind and Twoflower meet a gnome, and there is a discussion of Twoflower's perception of what a gnome should look like (bright red and blue clothing, etc., with white beards) and the survivability factor of something that small which so obviously stands out from its forest surroundings. Do you ever worry that you might run out of clichés and ideas that you can work your humor on?

Terry Pratchett: Shit, no. Mind you, it depends what you call a cliché. Part of being human is to have a headful of received opinions, out-of-date information, half-digested and completely unconsidered factoids and a whole bunch of other stuff which we use instead of thinking. That's my happy hunting ground. 

In any case, there's got to be more to a book than that. But a lot of Discworld humor -- in fact the basis of Discworld humour -- is not "wacky thinking" but entirely logical thinking. All the picture books show gnomes in brightly colored clothes -- let's take that seriously and see what happens next. For centuries artists have portrayed Death as a figure -- let's take that seriously. In The Fifth Elephant, one of the strands lies in taking seriously the idea of a true werewolf (i.e., not some shambling monster, but someone who can take on a wolf shape) and wondering what would real wolves think about this? You get an interesting answer.  

Crescent Blues: For The Fifth Elephant, have you done research into real wolf behavior to understand this type of thing or is it more of a common sense (Discworld style) reasoning? 

Terry Pratchett: Both. I've researched wolves, over the years, but generally I start from what is "common sense." I think I've come up with quite a good way of explaining the different types of werewolves, anyway. 

Crescent Blues: Different types of werewolf? I'm afraid I have to plead ignorance here as know only one type of werewolf unless of course I was to differ between British and American werewolves. (I understand one came to London a few years back. [Grins.]) Would you elucidate a little about what the different types are? 

Terry Pratchett: Bearing in mind Discworld deals with the world as perceived, and what we "know" about werewolves, as with vampires, has a lot to do with a huge body of movies/fiction/folklore. [Smiles.] 

Apparently Discworld werewolves look a lot like the three classes of werewolves defined by a guy called Riccardo Testa in a book called, I think, Die Lycanthropia, published several hundred years ago -- I say this because I've seen it referred to but have never come across a copy. 

There are the "royal" werewolves -- people who can become a wolf at will at any time (although in Discworld I add that they must be a wolf at full moon). For them, being a werewolf is a noble thing. There are the "classic" werewolves -- the guy who becomes a werewolf at full moon. And there is their opposite, which I think of as the "cursed" werewolf -- the wolf who becomes a man at full moon. For both of these, being a werewolf is no fun at all.  

Folklore and the great body of fiction support the first two -- I thought I'd invented the last one, but apparently not. But I've also had to take on board the "hairy guy still with his trousers on" werewolf (folklore suggests you just turn into a wolf, not some kind of a wolfman), so I've had to find a way to plausibly allow this, too. Werewolf families can be weird -- wait until The Fifth Elephant! 

Crescent Blues: There are several American writers, including Elizabeth Peters and Sharyn McCrumb, who are so keen to read your books that they have standing orders with English publishers and book distributors to buy your books the moment they come into print. (And who said that eccentricity was purely a British trait?) Are there any authors whose books you refuse to miss? 

Terry Pratchett: Er... Carl Hiassen, George McDonald Fraser, Donald Westlake, Joseph Waumbaugh... 

Crescent Blues: Any who provide a great inspiration to your work? 

Terry Pratchett: That's harder to say. Inspiration comes from everywhere. 

Crescent Blues: Thank you. That's quite an impressive list of authors and they cover such diverse areas too. (Translation: I had to go and look one up.) Do you find that reading the comic mysteries gives you a break from Discworld, or do you find that their absurdist visions feed your own imagination and help produce facets of the Discworld? 

Terry Pratchett: Both. But the four books currently beside my bed are a history of the tobacco industry, a collection of English essays on various subjects, a book of American folklore and a Tom Clancy. I read lots of stuff... 

In a couple of weeks I'm off to Australia. [Do you] think this interview will be over by then? 

Crescent Blues: That was actually the next to the last question. For a closing question, we give you a blank page. Is there anything else you'd like to add or feel we haven't covered enough. Or do you have a soapbox topic you want to mention? As I said before, your text is unaltered (except for proofing) when it's posted to the site. 

Terry Pratchett: I answer questions. I've never been very good at the "and is there anything else you want to say?" one, though. [Smiles.] 

Stephen J. Metherell Smith and Donna Andrews