Title: A Slip of the Keyboard
Author(s): Terry Pratchett
Release year: 2014
Publisher: Doubleday
Why in Database: This book is a collection of texts that Pratchett wrote over the years, essays, texts for various magazines, speeches that he made or someone read on his behalf at conventions, etc. Almost the entire first text is about turtles, but we chose to skip the large non-turtle pieces and present it in four smaller pieces.)
As noted above, the first four fragments are taken from the text Thought Progress, which describes the beginning of the plot ideas for Small Gods:
Post arrives. One letter on Holly Hobbie notepaper, asking for a signed photograph. All right, all right, let’s do some research. What we need to know for the purposes of the next Discworld plot is something about tortoises. Got vague idea that a talking tortoise is essential part of the action. Don’t know why; tortoises just surfaced from racial unconsciousness. Possibly prompted by own tortoises surfacing from hibernation and currently doing Bertrand Russell impersonations in the greenhouse.
Find book on tortoises in box in spare room..”>1
Interesting footnote in tortoise book reminds us that most famous tortoise in history must be the one that got dropped on the head of famous Greek philosopher … what’s the bugger’s name? Very famous man, wherever the tortoise-dropping set get together. Sudden pressing desire to explore this whole issue, including what the tortoise thought about it all. Keep thinking it was Zeno, but am sure it wasn’t.
Finding out that it was Aeschylus occupies twenty minutes. Not philosopher, but playwright. In his hands, early drama took on a high-religious purpose, serving as a forum for resolving profound moral conflicts and expressing a grandeur of thought and language. And then a high-pitched whistling noise and good night. Look up Zeno out of interest. Ah, he was the one who said that, logically, you couldn’t catch a tortoise..”>2
Wonder why the eagle dropped the bloody thing on the playwright. It couldn’t have been to smash it open, like the book says. Eagles not daft. Greece is all rock, how come eagle with all Greece to choose from manages pinpoint precision on bald head of Aeschylus? How do you pronounce Aeschylus, anyway?.”>3
Start wondering, perhaps not eagle’s fault after all, it just had job to do, it had been flying too many missions, jeez, you get thrown out of eagle air force if you start worrying about the innocent philosophers you’re dropping your tortoises on. Hatch-22. No.
Stare at screen.
No. It was obviously tortoise’s idea all along. Had grudge against playwright, perhaps tortoises had been insulted in latest play, perhaps offended at speed-ist jokes, perhaps had seen tortoiseshell spectacles: you dirty rat, you got my brother. So hijacked eagle, hanging on to desperate bird’s legs like the tortoise in the old Friends of the Earth logo, giving directions in muffled voice, vector 19, beepbeepbeep, Geronimooooo.…
Stare at screen.
Wonder if eagle has anything else a desperate tortoise could hang on to. Look up biology of birds in encyclopedia in box on stairs. Gosh. Supper. Stare at screen. Turn ideas over and over. Tortoises, bald head, eagles. Hmm. No, can’t be playwright, what sort of person would tortoises instantly dislike?.”>4
The next piece comes from the text No Worries where Terry mentions his trip to Australia and signing books:
One lady has made me an entire box of origami turtles. No worries..”>5
In the Straight from the Heart, via the Groin, Terry explains what he is proud of in his work:
The books I’m really most proud of having written are the children’s books. It was brought home to me today when I was talking to the kids, why this is. They started asking about the turtles. Then they continued asking about the turtles. And I said, “Okay, no turtle questions.”
They said: “Okay, well, about the elephants then …”.”>6
In Discworld Turns 21 Pratchett mentions species of turtle named after him:
My name’s been given to an extinct species of turtle, and various characters are commemorated in the Latin names of small plants and, I think, insects..”>7
There are two references to A’Tuin in Whose Fantasy Are You?:
I write about people who live on the Discworld, a world that’s flat and goes through space on the back of a giant turtle. .”>8
(They might be—the last I heard, physicists have discovered all these extra dimensions around the place which we can’t see because they’re rolled up small; and you don’t believe in giant world-carrying turtles?).”>9
In DOCTOR WHO? Author again (there are some repetitions of this type in various texts, after all, each of them constituted a separate whole, only this book collected them) mentions turtle species named after him:
They’ve taken me around the world a dozen times, I’ve had a species of turtle (an extinct species, I’m afraid) named after me, and I think I’ve signed more than three hundred thousand books;.”>10
Author: XYuriTT
