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Before anyone else gets enraged, this was Terry's will being honored. However, there's a debate to be had regarding whether it would have been worthy to release

Before anyone else gets enraged, this was Terry's will being honored. However, there's a debate to be had regarding whether it would have been worthy to release his final works even if incomplete and against his wishes.

senectus1 9y ago
meh, I dont care what "debate" there is about it. It was his dying wish. Not for filling that is disrespectful in the extreme. He wants his legacy to be as static as possible and not pimped out and whore'd to the highest bidder. Fair enough I say.
- adrianN 9y ago
  Kafka also wanted everything burned. Imagine what a loss that would have been.
  - concerto 9y ago
    Terry Pratchett had over 70 books published in his lifetime, and so his legacy is in his published works, while Kafka's masterpieces were largely unpublished at the time of his death and he was not widely known, so they are not really analogous situations.
    - aaron695 9y ago
      Rich powerful people have more rights? Or are you arguing these was more potential of some destruction of a legacy?
  - Santosh83 9y ago
    Interesting that we consider products of billions of years of biological evolution in a cosmos that shows no evidence of life anywhere else in its vast coldness as perfectly alright to be destroyed willy-nilly in the pursuit of short-sighted expansion and greed, but we are nevertheless full of hubris that OUR OWN excretions of imagination and little buildings and artefacts of our infant civilisation, right down to every single bit, needs to be preserved at all costs!
    - Houshalter 9y ago
      Please, show me the person who wants the world to be destroyed but not these specific books.
  - anvandare 9y ago
    The world would have been fine. We've probably lost uncountable number of beautiful works to destruction and geniuses to crib death that would have otherwise completely changed the (cultural) state of the world, but we don't miss them because we never knew about them. The path history took is as valid as all other paths it could have taken.
    - Houshalter 9y ago
      Sure the world is fine. But that's a really low bar of argument. If someone was going to go back in time and destroy great works, would you not strongly prefer them be stopped? (All else equal and no secondary consequences from time travel or whatever.) Do they have literally no utility to the world in your mind?
      - anvandare 9y ago
        No, because that's a paradoxical requirement. I can't care for things which I never knew (could have) existed, and interfering with reality so that they would exist would require me to care enough for them to exist so as to interfere in the first place. Every action we make chooses one from (infinite) branches of reality. Favoring one over the other is meaningless. The result of things existing will always be other things not existing. The atoms that I'm using to exist could have been used to compose other entities instead. You're assuming a sort of situation where everything that could exist would exist. A Borgesian library where not only every possible work of Kafka is written, but in every possible variation. The act of writing by itself destroys every alternative work. Are we certain that the Kafka we have is the best Kafka we could have? One morning, when Gregor Samsa woke from troubled dreams, he found himself transformed in his bed into a horrible vermin. One morning, when Georg Samsa woke from troubled dreams, he found himself transformed in his bed into a disgusting bug. One day, when Georg Valta woke from troubled dreams, he found himself awake in his bed transformed into a horrible vermin. In the morning, when Georg Sanka woke from dreadful dreams, he found himself awake in bed in the body of a nightmarish vermin. ...
        Houshalter 9y ago
  - pgeorgi 9y ago
    Given Kafka's work (and the sadistic pleasure teachers have in tormenting high school students with it), I'm quite angry that it wasn't followed through.
- khazhoux 9y ago
  Putting aside his dying wishes, why would it matter if there's a "highest bidder" at play? All commercial literature involves highest bidders and people make money who've never read a word of it, and what do we readers care as long as we get to enjoy the work itself?
- LeifCarrotson 9y ago
  Disrespectful to who or what? I'm sorry, but Terry's gone. There's no entity left to suffer if his legacy does not match what his desires were while he was alive - nor even to be the subject of the possessive "his". In my opinion, the only valid positive outcome of respect for the dead can be in benefits to the living - who may benefit from either disrespecting the dying wish, or alternatively from the expectation that their own dying wishes may some day be fulfilled. That's definitely a debate. I do think they made the right call here, though.
philh 9y ago
If Terry had expected us to ignore his wishes, how would we have acted differently in life? Would he have destroyed them himself just in case? Would he have done that before completing The Shepherd's Crown, or even an earlier book? I honestly don't know, but it's worth asking the question. That's how we can expect the next Terry Pratchett to act, if we ignore this Terry Pratchett's wishes. (I should note that even if the answer is that he would have shrugged and let us release his unfinished works, I still think we should obey his wishes. Terry belongs to Terry, no one else has a right to him.)

senectus1 9y ago

meh, I dont care what "debate" there is about it. It was his dying wish. Not for filling that is disrespectful in the extreme. He wants his legacy to be as static as possible and not pimped out and whore'd to the highest bidder. Fair enough I say.

adrianN 9y ago
Kafka also wanted everything burned. Imagine what a loss that would have been.
- concerto 9y ago
  Terry Pratchett had over 70 books published in his lifetime, and so his legacy is in his published works, while Kafka's masterpieces were largely unpublished at the time of his death and he was not widely known, so they are not really analogous situations.
  - aaron695 9y ago
    Rich powerful people have more rights? Or are you arguing these was more potential of some destruction of a legacy?
- Santosh83 9y ago
  Interesting that we consider products of billions of years of biological evolution in a cosmos that shows no evidence of life anywhere else in its vast coldness as perfectly alright to be destroyed willy-nilly in the pursuit of short-sighted expansion and greed, but we are nevertheless full of hubris that OUR OWN excretions of imagination and little buildings and artefacts of our infant civilisation, right down to every single bit, needs to be preserved at all costs!
  - Houshalter 9y ago
    Please, show me the person who wants the world to be destroyed but not these specific books.
- anvandare 9y ago
  The world would have been fine. We've probably lost uncountable number of beautiful works to destruction and geniuses to crib death that would have otherwise completely changed the (cultural) state of the world, but we don't miss them because we never knew about them. The path history took is as valid as all other paths it could have taken.
  - Houshalter 9y ago
    Sure the world is fine. But that's a really low bar of argument. If someone was going to go back in time and destroy great works, would you not strongly prefer them be stopped? (All else equal and no secondary consequences from time travel or whatever.) Do they have literally no utility to the world in your mind?
    - anvandare 9y ago
      No, because that's a paradoxical requirement. I can't care for things which I never knew (could have) existed, and interfering with reality so that they would exist would require me to care enough for them to exist so as to interfere in the first place. Every action we make chooses one from (infinite) branches of reality. Favoring one over the other is meaningless. The result of things existing will always be other things not existing. The atoms that I'm using to exist could have been used to compose other entities instead. You're assuming a sort of situation where everything that could exist would exist. A Borgesian library where not only every possible work of Kafka is written, but in every possible variation. The act of writing by itself destroys every alternative work. Are we certain that the Kafka we have is the best Kafka we could have? One morning, when Gregor Samsa woke from troubled dreams, he found himself transformed in his bed into a horrible vermin. One morning, when Georg Samsa woke from troubled dreams, he found himself transformed in his bed into a disgusting bug. One day, when Georg Valta woke from troubled dreams, he found himself awake in his bed transformed into a horrible vermin. In the morning, when Georg Sanka woke from dreadful dreams, he found himself awake in bed in the body of a nightmarish vermin. ...
      - Houshalter 9y ago
- pgeorgi 9y ago
  Given Kafka's work (and the sadistic pleasure teachers have in tormenting high school students with it), I'm quite angry that it wasn't followed through.
khazhoux 9y ago
Putting aside his dying wishes, why would it matter if there's a "highest bidder" at play? All commercial literature involves highest bidders and people make money who've never read a word of it, and what do we readers care as long as we get to enjoy the work itself?
LeifCarrotson 9y ago
Disrespectful to who or what? I'm sorry, but Terry's gone. There's no entity left to suffer if his legacy does not match what his desires were while he was alive - nor even to be the subject of the possessive "his". In my opinion, the only valid positive outcome of respect for the dead can be in benefits to the living - who may benefit from either disrespecting the dying wish, or alternatively from the expectation that their own dying wishes may some day be fulfilled. That's definitely a debate. I do think they made the right call here, though.

philh 9y ago

If Terry had expected us to ignore his wishes, how would we have acted differently in life? Would he have destroyed them himself just in case? Would he have done that before completing The Shepherd's Crown, or even an earlier book? I honestly don't know, but it's worth asking the question. That's how we can expect the next Terry Pratchett to act, if we ignore this Terry Pratchett's wishes. (I should note that even if the answer is that he would have shrugged and let us release his unfinished works, I still think we should obey his wishes. Terry belongs to Terry, no one else has a right to him.)