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.
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books published in his lifetime, and so his legacy is in his published works, while Kafka's masterpieces were largely unpublished at the time of his death and he was not widely known, so they are not really analogous situations.
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!
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.
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?
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.
You can assign value to different world states. All of life is about trying to steer reality into branches we prefer! Every decision you will ever make is to increase the probability of world states you desire more. If you really didn't have any preferences, you wouldn't do anything at all.
And yes, I absolutely would prefer to live in the world state with optimal Kafka. You really wouldn't? If Kafka came up to and asked him to help you with his wording or something, you wouldn't assist him at all?
Yes, you can assign values to different world versions, but each version would have their own values.
It's a meaningless (to others), subjective categorization. There is no solution to the trolley problem where both branches agree to let one branch die.
I didn't mean that I do not have any preferences, but that my
preferences aren't special or better than others' preferences, in the same way that
another version of the world (where Pratchett's wishes were overruled) is not a
better world than the current one. I think I'm skirting close to
Leibniz here. Yes, the world could be better, but it would not be our world, and it
would only be better to some of us, and worse for others.
It's highly unlikely that your best Kafka is my best Kafka. As such there is no Best Kafka. The world in which I help Kafka finish The Castle is one in which (for want of a nail) a trillion years from now the Zormulons exterminate the Qdhraxians. I doubt the Qdhraxians are happy I at least got an ending to a story.
And who knows how many masterpieces have never been discovered, perhaps because their authors burnt them before anyone saw them? In some other timeline people are eternally grateful that XYZ's 1867 manuscript was found (just before s/he struck the match) and published and saved the world and founded a new religion of universal peace and happiness. Well, too bad we don't live in that timeline.
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.
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?
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.
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.)
I respect this a lot - if he hadn't, relatives or others would eventually publish his unfinished works (either in an unfinished state or completed by another author). The money is too alluring.
Sarcasm? There has been interviews with him where he discusses his "writing equipment" and like many authors he preferred a basic system that kept mostly out of his way. I mean it's just as easy to write a novel in Word for DOS* as it is in the latest software and hardware tech, so why would authors want to waste their time always running the latest tech when it's a distraction from their day job?
* I'm not advocating people write novels in DOS. Just making an exaggerated point that since the medium is text only you don't need to be upgrading frequently.
Could easily have been a drive that had been in his main work machine for quite some time. He no doubt had the good sense to have backups on other local drives and remote services[1], but this could still be his primary store. It isn't like holding the text of books in progress is a task that needs the speediest of SSDs so if that drive just kept working why would he replace it?
[1] presumably these have also been purged if his wishes were so written or interpreted, probably by more conventional means[2]
[2] the bulldozer being used for this one drive for ceremonial purposes
PATA drives were still common enough ten years ago, maybe not in brand new machines but certainly in active ones and readily available as replacements/upgrades. Using a machine from ~10 years ago for document authoring isn't unusual. A good keyboard screen is more important than the rest of the machine for that sort of job - you don't need something new, fancy, & powerful, and many authors prefer an older machine because they can't run distractions well!
I have mixed feelings about this. On the one hand this was his wish, but on the other hand I am sure that future generations of pratchettologists will mourn the loss.
Not only that, there's one of his (many) quotes that fits nicely with this way of thinking:
"I save about twenty drafts — that's ten meg of disc space — and the last one contains all the final alterations. Once it has been printed out and received by the publishers, there's a cry here of 'Tough shit, literary researchers of the future, try getting a proper job!' and the rest are wiped."
On one hand, as a long time Pratchett fan, it would be interesting to see what ideas he was working on (I'll miss many of his characters), on the other hand and looking at other examples (cough, cough, Tolkien, cough), I prefer his legacy to be what it is today.
I just read an article about George R.R. Martin's writing process, and apparently he's done some extreme rewrites to some of his books, and submitted all his intermediary manuscripts to some archive.
As for Tolkien, I'm quite happy that the Silmarillion got published.
Its not just about the release of an unfinished novel with lots of rough edges, its our understanding of how the Diskworld evolved in Pterry's mind over the years. TCOM was a simple spoof of swords-and-sorcery epics, but by Going Postal it had become a complex world that fused magic with steampunk. The rough drafts, abandoned dead-ends and private notes that presumably inhabited those disk drives would have provided insights into how this happened.
Update: just read loopbit's response to the same post. Good point.
It's interesting the parallels I see between this and right to die.
He didn't want to destroy his work whilst he could still work. But if he waits too long and misses the opportunity to take action whilst in good health he may lose control over it. Without the other limiting factors - this feels like a very easy call. I'm thrilled that he trusted people to see his wishes through - and as importantly that they've shown themselves to be deserving of said trust
I'm really annoyed that Pope John Paul's II wishes were not respected by his life long friend and right hand - Cardinal Dziwisz - Pope asked him to burn all his notes after his death, which the cardinal promised, and then released all the notes in a book after pope's death. I can "sort of" get his reasoning - that these notes were extremely valuable to the church and people in general - but a personal wish, especially such as this, should be respected in my opinion.
I think the important thing is that it's a form of deceit. It's not about the value to the public vs the value of the person's wishes: if you don't intend to go through with the wishes or believe there is a good chance that you will not be able to, then you should recuse yourself at the point of the request (or as soon as you realise). Deciding to stay involved and make your own choice is simply duplicitious - it completely defeats the point of having the legal power. It wouldn't surprise me if someone could sue the executor, since they are clearly acting against the best interests of the person.
That's an interesting example of where personal wishes cross over the 'corporate' boundary. The person is subsumed by the job and unless they display huge self-restraint it will be difficult to separate personal notes from their corporate thinking.
Presidential diaries would be another example, or a CEO's Rolodex.
Both retention and publication go against the wishes of the deceased, but I would see putting them in the Vatican Archives for a few researchers to peruse as a lesser transgression than putting them in a book for all to see.
I agree with you that there is probably a legal or moral requirement to retain the notes of Pope John Paul II, and that may override his personal wishes (though, again, in an archive, rather than in all good bookshops).
You are also correct that it may be difficult, or even impossible to separate JP2's notes from Karol Wojtyla's notes after 1978, but what about before? Are the notes of Bishop of Ombi or the Archbishop of Krakow also as important? How far back does the corporate entanglement go?
My (somewhat oblique) question is why copyright would apply to a dead guy's works. ...It's not like respecting copyright is going to get him to write more.
The standard answer is that it incentivizes living authors to know that their heirs will be able to continue to benefit from their work.
In any case, the question of why it is that way doesn't much matter for this particular question. Regardless of why copyright applies to a dead guy's works, it does.
That may depend on whether they are John Paul II's notes (and the Bishop of Ombi's etc.) or Karol Wojtyla's. And whether the published work belongs to The Church or to Dziwisz.
Sure but if you think about it this way I am sure there were countless works of the same caliber or greater which have never seen the light of day for various reasons, and I can't say we are poorer for it, since we don't even know what we lost. You can't mourn something that you didn't know you had - so a world that never had Kafka could not mourn the lack of his works.
A compromise would have been nice. Perhaps digitize the notes and only release them after every person that was alive in the world at the moment of Pratchett's death was also dead.
For cases like this there should be Long Bearded Commissioner who decides to split the country in half - one side would get the papers and the other would pretend they were destroyed. Each citizen should be given a choice in which reality to live in.
One of the many conundrums of modern politics is that the tax collectors could indeed collect more tax if they were better funded, so every tax dollar spent would recoup more than one tax dollar, yet this is resisted by the people who are presumably not currently paying what they should under current laws, and they've convinced people who do pay what they should under current laws, that this is a good thing.
I'd suspect there wouldn't be much funding to provide access to impaired people, either. Most people probably aren't all that interested in paying for things in Braille.
I live in an unincorporated township, with just a few residents. My road would never get plowed or maintained.
I didn't mean total replacement, in some cases it would work better, in other cases what we've got actually works pretty well. I meant some percentage of your tax should be controlled by the taxpayer directly, let's say 1% to start, increasing every 4 years by 1% up to, 20% for example.
I don't think 20% of the budget is capable of being discretionary. If you're really wanting to do so, some government agencies actually accept donations. When I sold my business, I donated to NASA. I couldn't earmark the donation for something like educational outreach as donations have to go into the general fund.
The problem is that the preferences of individuals does not match the preference of those people in a group.
A group (say, of castaways on a desert island) can easily afford to have 99% of people donate 1% of their output to support a 1% of their population that was paralyzed in the crash, and most would prefer not to watch that 1% die of neglect. But individually, no one can give 100% of their output to that 1%.
Left to their own devices and anonymous, people will slowly opt out of the voluntary contribution, and the situation will be worse than what everyone wanted. Unless the group has some means of compelling everyone to contribute.
I'd rather live in a society where everyone (including myself) was forced to contribute, than a society in which no one was. Living in a society in which everyone else happens to contribute to the things you'd like, while you don't have to contribute, is not an option that's on the table.
The key problem with referenda is they put an amount of control of the future into the hands of people who decide on important insurances based on which company gives the best cuddly toy, and give about as much complex thought to political decisions too (so are easily swayed by whoever sqwaks out their atrocious disingenuineness and out-right lies the loudest - not that I'm bitter at all...).
By the time we get the technology to do that, we could probably build an AI pratchett that generates great works perfectly within his style and quality. Like that black mirror episode but slightly less creepy.
Presumably, the RNN would be deep enough to recognize that "a coherent plot" is a component of the work on which it's being trained and which it must generate. But not so deep that it generates eldritch horrors.
That would be a fantastically deep network. Current AI can sometimes keep track of what's going on until the end of the paragraph. A novel's worth of threads to track is simply too much for the naive toss-it-in-a-wood-chipper approach.
That platter was remarkably intact. You can send broken drives like this to a company. They can recover most of the data. NSA could do it too. If you don't overwrite several times with a random pattern it is recoverable.
Also that drive is old and I am suspicious that is the only copy, or that the novels we're there anyway. Seems likely Pratchett destroyed them already and this was symbolic.
What's the opposite of a Pratchett novel? If it were a matter of losing this then Pratchett fans and experts would presumably not mourn. However now consider the case of an almost-but-not-quite Pratchett novel. Though this is not-a-Pratchett novel, it is deceptively and misleadingly not-a-Pratchett novel, because it still resembles one. It therefore stands the greatest chance of leading fans down the garden path and distorting the overall body of work.
Did a bit of poking around, it looks like there's a substantial collection of his materials at the Senate House Library at the University of London. [1]
These materials include quite a few interesting research angles: draft manuscripts of published works, unpublished stories, other ephemera including letters, & biographies by other authors.
"I save about twenty drafts -- that's ten meg of disc space -- and the last one contains all the final alterations. Once it has been printed out and received by the publishers, there's a cry here of 'Tough shit, literary researchers of the future, try getting a proper job!' and the rest are wiped."
Well to be honest his more recent books started to be more dull in a way, although I respect deeply his work, especially with the earlier books, but maybe the alzheimer started to have an effect also on his writing. I've read most of his works until Snuff or so, but those 3 - 5 books before that just really didn't had the same magic anymore, so maybe it's for the best.
I found Discworld by starting with Unseen Academicals that I picked up at Düsseldorf waiting for my flight home from a business trip. I had it finished by the time the car service dropped me off at home.
Absolutely the writing quality had started to diminish -- it was at the point that I just felt sadness, and that I was doing Pratchett a disservice to even read his later books, as I think the Pratchett of 10 years ago wouldn't have wanted them to be written, if he knew.
Agreed; 'Raising Steam' made me so sad I couldn't finish it (I thought it was a much better story when titled 'Making Money', and even better when it was called 'Going Postal').
Good to hear, Going Postal was still good in my books, sometime I've pondered should I make an attempt to read those I didn't feel the call to, now I can assure I have no need to read those.
I throughly enjoyed the webcomic Digger [1]. I didn't realize the author had so many other works published on the internet and in print. Thank you for this pointer!
Good to see his wishes fulfilled. In the end, it was his choice and no-one else's.
In comparison, Douglas Adams' remaining incomplete notes were turned into a book after he died (The Salmon Of Doubt). As a fan, it was frustrating to read - you could see his moments of genius, but the gaps in the story and the unrefined parts of the text were a let down. I gladly bought the book, but after finishing it, I'm not sure it was a good choice to publish the unfinished writings.
If an author had a very-nearly complete book, I reckon it might be worthwhile to let someone else do the final tidying up and publish, but if Terry Pratchett's remaining works were lots of partially complete writings, I think it would be a poor reflection on the author to let someone else work on them.
For something like Salmon of Doubt there was far more than small print to tell them apart, though. It was not a half finished book as much as a half finished fragment of one preceded by a substantial section that acted as an eulogy to Adams. As such I think it was worthwhile.
I agree with you that if a work is published and presented as just another one of their novels it is different.
I would have liked to see what his existing writing partners -- Neil Gaiman or Stephen Baxter, for instance -- could have done. But it's not what he wanted.
Terry Pratchett's "Long Earth" collaboration with Stephen Baxter came to its planned conclusion at least. I would assume that whatever PTerry had wished for his writing collaborators to continue on in his stead was already prepared for well in advance.
I liked 'Salmon of Doubt,' personally. It felt a lot like a eulogy to me, and apropriate.
There were reminders of how he thought, and why the way he thought was special. There were hints at all the work he left undone. The tragic loss of his premature death. What could have been.
It also left some sense of who he was, what he cared about and considered important, who his friends were.
Same with Tolkien. His son collected a lot of notes and half-finished writing, and published them as a number of different books, like "The Book of Lost Tales".
It has moments where Tolkien's skill shines through, but it's much harder to read. I can't really recommend them.
The Silmarillion on the other hand, seems to have mostly been finished when Tolkien passed.
Whilst I love his writing, the last couple of books I read of his were, in my opinion, poor and not worth releasing. I can understand why he'd have wanted this. Nasty illness.
On the other hand, if it weren't for the Salmon of Doubt, I wouldn't have realized Adams' genius writings on other (non-fiction) topics besides THHGTTG and Dirk Gently. In fairness, I could have found that out in other ways if I'd have looked, but thanks to Salmon of Doubt I've come to appreciate the man's writings and personality in a much broader way.
So I say it was a good thing overall. Even though it was also sad because it was the unfinished writings of a dead author I love.
Franz Kafka had similar wishes, that his friend was to destroy all his work. I can't say I'm "glad" per se that he didn't since such emotions are antithetical to Kafka, but I suppose it is for the best, culturally that his friend went ahead and published them ...
I suppose it's a little different given Pratchett's stuff here was "unfinished" tho Kafka could have argued all his stuff was unfinished too ...
With Kafka, we got great novels out of the postumous publication. The publication of Joyce's letters to Nora Barnacle, however, paint him as someone who "[fastens] intently on peculiarities of sexual behaviour, some of which might be technically called perverse"[1]. No one has really benefited from their publication, except perhaps gossip columns.
I think I would stick to the author's desires. As great as Kafka's work is, I don't think we are "entitled" to them. But I can understand the opposing point too.
[1] Richard Ellmann, Selected Letters of James Joyce, Introduction, Faber & Faber, London, 1975
This is dramatic and certainly renders the drive itself useless, but this is not how you securely destroy data. The bits on those platters are still largely recoverable. Do Terry a favor and run that drive over a degausser (or at least a really big magnet) before putting it in a museum. And let everyone know you did it. Remove the temptation for someone to steal it, attempt a forensic recovery, and try to sell unfinished Terry Pratchett novels that the author never intended to see the light of day.
That sounds like a lot of money to spend to get fragments of notes for an unfinished book that you can't even sell as "Terry Pratchett's Unfinished Book" because his estate would sue you. Not to mention the legal risk of stealing the hard drive fragments then publicly admitting that you did it when you publish your book.
Well when step one is "steal hard drive from museum", you can assume that the sale and (initial) distribution are unlikely to be conducted above-board. Depending on one's access to sophisticated forensic tools, this may still be a difficult undertaking to extract any profit from. But money isn't the only possible motive.
Terry Pratchett was one of my most favourite authors, it's rare to see someone keep building up a universe that both my elderly teachers and me as a student could appreciate during high school. Moreover, I wish there were more movie adaptations than what they have now.
Also seems so long ago, I used to play Discworld MUD and relive the stories on there as well. And now Terry has passed away (RIP, hope you're having fun with Death) and Discworld is off on its own, floating on a turtle somewhere. I have to be honest, I would read some Discworld fan fiction just to see those familiar characters again.
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[ 0.73 ms ] story [ 107 ms ] threadHe wants his legacy to be as static as possible and not pimped out and whore'd to the highest bidder. Fair enough I say.
Or are you arguing these was more potential of some destruction of a legacy?
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.
...
And yes, I absolutely would prefer to live in the world state with optimal Kafka. You really wouldn't? If Kafka came up to and asked him to help you with his wording or something, you wouldn't assist him at all?
I didn't mean that I do not have any preferences, but that my preferences aren't special or better than others' preferences, in the same way that another version of the world (where Pratchett's wishes were overruled) is not a better world than the current one. I think I'm skirting close to Leibniz here. Yes, the world could be better, but it would not be our world, and it would only be better to some of us, and worse for others.
It's highly unlikely that your best Kafka is my best Kafka. As such there is no Best Kafka. The world in which I help Kafka finish The Castle is one in which (for want of a nail) a trillion years from now the Zormulons exterminate the Qdhraxians. I doubt the Qdhraxians are happy I at least got an ending to a story.
It's hard to miss what you never knew.
Would have been great to possibly break out of that before our lifetimes, and I'd guess writing could have played a big part in that.
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.
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.)
http://wiki.lspace.org/mediawiki/index.php/Multiple_exclamat...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lost_work
* I'm not advocating people write novels in DOS. Just making an exaggerated point that since the medium is text only you don't need to be upgrading frequently.
Not that i can't relate. If i could find a CLI browser that kept up with latest CSS and JS stuff, i would be doing everything in a framebuffer CLI.
[1] presumably these have also been purged if his wishes were so written or interpreted, probably by more conventional means[2]
[2] the bulldozer being used for this one drive for ceremonial purposes
"I save about twenty drafts — that's ten meg of disc space — and the last one contains all the final alterations. Once it has been printed out and received by the publishers, there's a cry here of 'Tough shit, literary researchers of the future, try getting a proper job!' and the rest are wiped."
On one hand, as a long time Pratchett fan, it would be interesting to see what ideas he was working on (I'll miss many of his characters), on the other hand and looking at other examples (cough, cough, Tolkien, cough), I prefer his legacy to be what it is today.
As for Tolkien, I'm quite happy that the Silmarillion got published.
Update: just read loopbit's response to the same post. Good point.
He didn't want to destroy his work whilst he could still work. But if he waits too long and misses the opportunity to take action whilst in good health he may lose control over it. Without the other limiting factors - this feels like a very easy call. I'm thrilled that he trusted people to see his wishes through - and as importantly that they've shown themselves to be deserving of said trust
Presidential diaries would be another example, or a CEO's Rolodex.
Both retention and publication go against the wishes of the deceased, but I would see putting them in the Vatican Archives for a few researchers to peruse as a lesser transgression than putting them in a book for all to see.
I agree with you that there is probably a legal or moral requirement to retain the notes of Pope John Paul II, and that may override his personal wishes (though, again, in an archive, rather than in all good bookshops).
You are also correct that it may be difficult, or even impossible to separate JP2's notes from Karol Wojtyla's notes after 1978, but what about before? Are the notes of Bishop of Ombi or the Archbishop of Krakow also as important? How far back does the corporate entanglement go?
In any case, the question of why it is that way doesn't much matter for this particular question. Regardless of why copyright applies to a dead guy's works, it does.
That may depend on whether they are John Paul II's notes (and the Bishop of Ombi's etc.) or Karol Wojtyla's. And whether the published work belongs to The Church or to Dziwisz.
I wonder if, around 100 years from now, that would create a tontine type scenario.
I live in an unincorporated township, with just a few residents. My road would never get plowed or maintained.
A group (say, of castaways on a desert island) can easily afford to have 99% of people donate 1% of their output to support a 1% of their population that was paralyzed in the crash, and most would prefer not to watch that 1% die of neglect. But individually, no one can give 100% of their output to that 1%.
Left to their own devices and anonymous, people will slowly opt out of the voluntary contribution, and the situation will be worse than what everyone wanted. Unless the group has some means of compelling everyone to contribute.
I'd rather live in a society where everyone (including myself) was forced to contribute, than a society in which no one was. Living in a society in which everyone else happens to contribute to the things you'd like, while you don't have to contribute, is not an option that's on the table.
It might not be a stretch to say that future generations would have the technology to recover the data, if past trends are any indication:
http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/ancient-scrolls-blacke...
As far as physical destruction goes, this isn't even that extreme.
Would it generate new Discworld stories, or would it rip a portal into the Dungeon Dimensions releasing the eldritch horrors that dwell within?
Also that drive is old and I am suspicious that is the only copy, or that the novels we're there anyway. Seems likely Pratchett destroyed them already and this was symbolic.
These materials include quite a few interesting research angles: draft manuscripts of published works, unpublished stories, other ephemera including letters, & biographies by other authors.
[1] http://www.ulrls.lon.ac.uk/resources/Pratchett.pdf
Re Terry's opinion on 'pratchettologists', may I point you to the following in the Pratchett Quote File: https://www.lspace.org/books/pqf/alt-fan-pratchett.html
"I save about twenty drafts -- that's ten meg of disc space -- and the last one contains all the final alterations. Once it has been printed out and received by the publishers, there's a cry here of 'Tough shit, literary researchers of the future, try getting a proper job!' and the rest are wiped."
-- (Terry Pratchett, alt.fan.pratchett)
PS: I would have destroyed the shit out of that HD.
[1] http://diggercomic.com/
In comparison, Douglas Adams' remaining incomplete notes were turned into a book after he died (The Salmon Of Doubt). As a fan, it was frustrating to read - you could see his moments of genius, but the gaps in the story and the unrefined parts of the text were a let down. I gladly bought the book, but after finishing it, I'm not sure it was a good choice to publish the unfinished writings.
If an author had a very-nearly complete book, I reckon it might be worthwhile to let someone else do the final tidying up and publish, but if Terry Pratchett's remaining works were lots of partially complete writings, I think it would be a poor reflection on the author to let someone else work on them.
I agree with you that if a work is published and presented as just another one of their novels it is different.
I would have liked to see what his existing writing partners -- Neil Gaiman or Stephen Baxter, for instance -- could have done. But it's not what he wanted.
It also left some sense of who he was, what he cared about and considered important, who his friends were.
It has moments where Tolkien's skill shines through, but it's much harder to read. I can't really recommend them.
The Silmarillion on the other hand, seems to have mostly been finished when Tolkien passed.
So I say it was a good thing overall. Even though it was also sad because it was the unfinished writings of a dead author I love.
[0] https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=_ZG8HBuDjgc
I suppose it's a little different given Pratchett's stuff here was "unfinished" tho Kafka could have argued all his stuff was unfinished too ...
With Kafka, we got great novels out of the postumous publication. The publication of Joyce's letters to Nora Barnacle, however, paint him as someone who "[fastens] intently on peculiarities of sexual behaviour, some of which might be technically called perverse"[1]. No one has really benefited from their publication, except perhaps gossip columns.
I think I would stick to the author's desires. As great as Kafka's work is, I don't think we are "entitled" to them. But I can understand the opposing point too.
[1] Richard Ellmann, Selected Letters of James Joyce, Introduction, Faber & Faber, London, 1975
Also seems so long ago, I used to play Discworld MUD and relive the stories on there as well. And now Terry has passed away (RIP, hope you're having fun with Death) and Discworld is off on its own, floating on a turtle somewhere. I have to be honest, I would read some Discworld fan fiction just to see those familiar characters again.