29 ms·
Newly discovered Terry Pratchett stories published
- sylware 3y ago[flagged]
- eesmith 3y agoThey were published in the 1970s and 1980s under a pseudonym.
- b112 3y agoThey were published in the 1970s and 1980s under a pseudonym. Yes I asked Bing/ChatGPT this, and the search results told me the very same thing! -- I wonder if some day we'll be hitting this. Search engines are throwing AI generated responses as search results, and I imagine soon we'll be giving AI more of a "memory" of recent things it has said and done. I imagine it covering its tracks. Even better when Wikipedia adds an AI editor, sourced from the same company backend. Each edit you make to fix the truth, is reverted by the same delusional AI. Then the undiscoverable untruths begin.
- Popeyes 3y agoTerry Pratchett is one of the sacred treasures of a section of society, and when you raise questions about him or his work you can be expected to downvoted to oblivion. (Replying to this because the other user has been flagged - for what I imagine is a fairly uncontroversial comment).
- eesmith 3y agoThe comment had nothing to do with the linked-to article. It suggested ChatGPT was involved, followed by a "sarcasm" disclaimer.
- hoseja 3y agoIt's only a matter of time until they publish a "newly discovered work" of a famous author that's just an AI forgery. Hasn't it happened yet?
- probably_wrong 3y agoForgeries already exist, no AI needed. So arguably the detection method would be the same. But in a more general sense, whether that happened depends on what you mean with "publish". If you mean "someone put it on Twitter and no one corrected them" then yes - it happens all the time with highly-anticipated books (I definitely read at least two fake Harry Potters back in the day) and no one corrects them because they are obviously fake. Now, if you mean "a respectable publishing house put it for sale" then I doubt it happened. No decent publishing house would take (say) a new Lovecraft before giving the state a call and/or asking for the receipts.
- sylware 3y ago[flagged]
- rsynnott 3y agoI'm not sure it qualifies as any sort of sarcasm. It's just a non-sequitur.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- Popeyes 3y agoIt's probably more interesting (rather than the argument about whether these should have been published) to note that local newspapers carried short stories for publication. And while we have a multitude of publishing platforms, a local paper like that would have had a far more diverse readership.
- rsynnott 3y agoStill do, I think? Small local papers will often take practically anything, if it fills pages.
- lc9er 3y agoI was initially skeptical about whether it violated his wishes. I thought they found unpublished stories. Then someone in his camp posted on Twitter that they were early, previously published stories - not the unfinished ones he didn’t want to see the light of day. And that he had been making efforts to republish his early works in the years before his passing.
- mcphage 3y agoHe’s got a book of short stories, which seem related to or variants of some of these, called “The Dragons of Crumbling Castle”, written while he was younger. And the same thing this article says applies to that book as well—some of them are good, some you see the hint of humor that he later hones, but on the whole, they’re not that strong.
- nottorp 3y agoThat goes for any writer. Take the complete works of Lovecraft, for example, because they fit in one thick volume. The ones at the beginning are ... skippable. But then he perfected his style.
- prmoustache 3y agoAny artist, or even craftsman in general. You only judge people by their masterpiece's standard. So anything lower will always have that meh feeling.
- somnic 3y agoI think that's generally true, but it can still be interesting to see early works from people who go on to hone their crafts. Sometimes just seeing how they progressed is worthwhile, sometimes the unpolished nature can emphasize brilliance, and sometimes the unintentional breaks from convention have engaging effects of their own.
- mcphage 3y agoAnd "Dragons of Crumbling Castle" is good for that. Like thinking of one of the stories in particular, is very clearly the kind of humor that he perfected in Discworld. But it's just too much, it's not sharp enough. It's a broad blade which he later turns into a scalpel. And they're not bad stories, just most are a bit dull. There was one I especially loved though, so I'm glad I read them, and my kids liked them as I was reading them out loud.
- deleted 3y ago
- rsynnott 3y ago> There are lots of 1970s in-jokes and references, which may baffle readers from later generations In fairness, this is something he kept doing, albeit with more contemporary references, hence the Annotated Pratchett Files: https://www.lspace.org/books/apf/ https://www.lspace.org/books/apf/
- TillE 3y agoAPF is great, but I wish there was a full Annotated Discworld published, like you get with many classic books. There are dozens of little references in each book which aren't documented on this site, not to mention the more recent books which have nothing.
- neets 3y agoAre we sure these are not AI?