Morre o escritor Terry Pratchett

Fernando_Silva

Morre o escritor Terry Pratchett, aos 66 anos

Autor de mais de 70 livros de fantasia sofria de atrofia cortical posterior, uma variação do Mal de Alzheimer



Terry Pratchett na New York Comic Con, em 2012 - © Luigi Novi / Wikimedia Commons

O autor de livros de fantasia Terry Pratchett morreu, nesta quinta-feira, aos 66 anos, após uma longa batalha contra a atrofia cortical posterior, uma variação do Mal de Alzheimer.

O anúncio da morte foi feito pela conta oficial do escritor no Twitter, em três publicações que simulavam a narração de uma história. A primeira foi digitada em caixa alta, uma marca registrada do autor quando o personagem da Morte tinha a fala.

"FINALMENTE, SIR TERRY, TEREMOS QUE CAMINHAR JUNTOS. Terry pegou os braços da Morte e a seguiu através da porta em direção ao deserto negro sob a noite sem fim. Fim", diz a sequência de mensagens, em tradução livre.

Assim que a notícia foi divulgada, na manhã desta quinta-feira, o site oficial do escritor saiu do ar, por conta do grande número de fãs tentando acessá-lo.

"Terry morreu em casa, com o gato dormindo em sua cama e cercado pela família, no dia 12 de março de 2015", informou a editora Transworld, em nota oficial. "Diagnosticado com o Mal de Alzheimer em 2007, ele lutou contra doença com sua marcante determinação e criatividade e continuou a escrever."

Nascido na cidade de Beaconsfield, ele publicou sua primeira história aos 13 anos e, posteriormente, trabalhou como jornalista no jornal inglês "Bucks Free Press". Seu primeiro romance, chamado de "The carpet people", foi publicado em 1971.

Pratchett era mais conhecido pela série "Discworld", iniciada em 1983 com "A cor da magia" e que teve 40 volumes publicados em mais de 25 idiomas, entre eles o português. Mas, em toda a carreira, escreveu mais de 70 livros, que, somados, venderam 85 milhões de cópias.

"O mundo perdeu uma de suas mentes mais brilhantes. Terry enriqueceu o planeta como poucos antes dele conseguiram", disse Larry Finlay, diretor da Transworld.

Ele foi diagnosticado com Alzheimer em 2007, mas seguiu na ativa. Ainda assim, era um defensor aberto da eutanásia.

"Acredito que deveria ser permitido a uma pessoa que sofre de uma doença séria e em última instância fatal escolher partir de forma tranquila com ajuda médica ao invés de sofrer", declarou em 2011.

No mesmo ano, ele narrou o documentário "Terry Pratchett: Choosing to die", sobre Peter Smedley, um homem de 71 anos que sofria de uma doença neuronal e cometeu suicídio assistido numa clínica suíça.

Além disso, Pratchett fez uma generosa doação pública para um fundo de pesquisas sobre o Mal de Alzheimer e participou de um programa do canal de TV "BBC", onde narrou suas experiências com a doença, que ele chamava de "um aborrecimento".

No ano passado, Pratchett foi forçado a cancelar uma participação na Convenção Internacional do Discworld por conta do avanço de sua condição.

Pratchett terminou de escrever seu último livro, mais um volume da série "Discworld", em meados do ano passado.

O autor deixa a mulher, Lyn, e uma filha, Rhianna.

http://oglobo.globo.com/cultura/livros/morre-escritor-terry-pratchett-aos-66-anos-15574889#ixzz3UGxBe2i0

Fernando_Silva

Trecho de um de seus livros:

Do livro "Reaper man" de Terry Pratchett

A Grande Truta e o céu das efeméridas

O Sol se aproximava do horizonte.
As criaturas de vida mais curta do Disco eram as efeméridas, que duram pouco mais de 24 horas.

Duas das mais velhas ziguezagueavam sem rumo sobre as águas de um rio cheio de trutas, debatendo História com alguns dos membros mais novos, nascidos dos ovos chocados naquela tarde.

"Não se vê mais o tipo de Sol que a gente costumava ver", disse um deles.
"Você está certo. Sol de verdade era o que tínhamos nas boas velhas horas. Ele era todo amarelo. Nada desse troço avermelhado".
"Ele era mais alto, também".
"Era sim. Você tem razão".
"E as ninfas e as larvas tinham mais respeito por nós, os mais velhos".
"Tinham! Tinham!", disse a outra efemérida veementemente.
"Na minha opinião, se as efeméridas das horas de agora se comportassem um pouco melhor, nós ainda teríamos um Sol que prestasse".

As efeméridas mais jovens escutavam em respeitoso silêncio.

"Eu lembro", disse uma das efeméridas mais velhas, "de quando tudo isto era mato até onde se podia ver".
As efeméridas mais jovens olharam em volta.
"Mas ainda é mato", uma delas ousou dizer, depois de um intervalo respeitoso.
"Eu lembro de quando era um mato melhor", disse secamente a efemérida velha.
"Sim", disse sua colega. "E havia uma vaca".
"É isso aí! Você está certo! Eu lembro daquela vaca! Ficou parada bem ali por uns, sei lá, 40, 50 minutos. Era marrom, se eu bem me lembro".
"Você não vê mais vacas assim nestas horas de agora".
"Você não vê mais vaca nenhuma".
"O que é uma vaca?", disse um dos recém-chocados.
"Você viu só?", disse a efemérida mais velha triunfantemente. "É assim que são as ephemeropteras modernas". Ela parou para pensar. "O que estávamos fazendo antes de conversar sobre o Sol?"
"Ziguezagueando sem rumo sobre a água", disse um dos insetos mais novos. Esta resposta dificilmente ofenderia os mais velhos.
"Não, antes disto".
"Ahn... você estava nos falando da Grande Truta".
"Ah, sim, certo. A Truta. Bem, como vocês sabem, se você tiver sido uma boa efemérida, ziguezagueando para cima e para baixo como deve ..."
"... ouvindo com respeito os mais velhos e mais sábios..."
"... sim, ouvindo com respeito os mais velhos e mais sábios, então um dia a Grande Truta ..."

Clop!
Clop!

"Sim?" disse uma das efeméridas mais novas.

Não houve resposta.

"A Grande Truta o quê?" disse outra efemérida, nervosamente.

Elas olharam para baixo e viram uma série de círculos concêntricos na água.

"O sinal sagrado!" disse uma efemérida. "Eu lembro que me falaram disso! Um Grande Círculo na água! Este é o sinal da Grande Truta!"

A mais velha das efeméridas jovens olhou a água pensativamente. Ela começou a se dar conta de que, sendo agora o inseto mais velho, ela tinha o privilégio de voar mais perto da superfície.

"Dizem," disse a efemérida no topo da nuvem ziguezagueante, "que quando a Grande Truta vem lhe buscar, você vai para uma terra cheia de ... cheia de ..."

Efeméridas não comem, e ela não sabia o que dizer. "Cheia de água", ela concluiu meio sem jeito.

"É, deve ser", disse a efemérida mais velha.
"Deve ser muito bom lá", disse a mais nova.
"Ah, é? Por quê?"
"Porque ninguém nunca quer voltar para cá".

Fernando_Silva

Trechos que colecionei enquanto lia os 40 livros da série "Discworld".
Lamento, não tive tempo de traduzir...

A year went past. The days followed one another patiently. Right back at the beginning of the multiverse
they had tried all passing at the same time, and it hadn’t worked.

---

Interestingly enough, the gods of the Disc have never bothered much about judging the souls of the dead, and so people only go to hell if that’s where they deserve to go. Which they won’t do if they don’t know about it. This explains why it is important to shoot missionaries on sight.

---

Hogswatchnight came round, marking the start of another year. And, with alarming suddenness, nothing happened.

---

An unlimited supply of no answer at all.

---

"Interesting Times"

When someone is saved from certain death by a strange concatenation of circumstances, they say that's a miracle.
But of course if someone is killed by a freak chain of events - the oil spilled just there, the safety fence broken
just there - that must also be a miracle. Just because it's not nice doesn't mean it's not miraculous.

---

Rincewind stared, and knew that there were far worse things than Evil. All the demons in Hell would torture your very soul, but that was precisely because they valued souls very highly; evil would always try to steal the universe, but at least it considered the universe worth stealing. But the grey world behind those empty eyes would trample and destroy without even according its victims the dignity of hatred. It wouldn’t even notice them.

---

We do right, we don't do nice

---

Poison goes where poison's welcome

---

In fact, since Ohulan was quite barbaric and uncivilised the only things that went on after dark to any degree were a little thievery, some amateurish trading in the courts of lust, and drinking until you fell over or started singing or both.

---

She sighed. Suddenly it looked as though that secretarial career was not such a bad option, at that.

Not for the first time she reflected that there were many drawbacks to being a swordswoman, not least of which was that men didn’t take you seriously until you’d actually killed them, by which time it didn’t really matter anyway. Then there was all the leather, which brought her out in a rash but seemed to be unbreakably traditional.

And then there was the ale. It was all right for the likes of Hrun the Barbarian or Cimbar the Assassin to carouse all night in low bars, but Herrena drew the line at it unless they sold proper drinks in small glasses, preferably with a cherry in. As for the toilet facilities . . .

But she was too big to be a thief, too honest to be an assassin, too intelligent to be a wife, and too proud to enter the only other female profession generally available.

So she’d become a swordswoman and had been a good one, amassing a modest fortune that she was carefully husbanding for a future that she hadn’t quite worked out yet but which would certainly include a bidet if she had anything to say about it.

---

Poets have tried to describe Ankh-Morpork. They have failed. Perhaps it’s the sheer zestful vitality of the place, or maybe it’s just that a city with a million inhabitants and no sewers is rather robust for poets, who prefer daffodils and no wonder. So let’s just say that Ankh-Morpork is as full of life as an old cheese on a hot day, as loud as a curse in a cathedral, as bright as an oil slick, as colourful as a bruise and as full of activity, industry, bustle and sheer exuberant busyness as a dead dog on a termite mound.

There were temples, their doors wide open, filling the streets with the sounds of gongs, cymbals and, in the case of some of the more conservative fundamentalist religions, the brief screams of the victims. There were shops whose strange wares spilled out on to the pavement. There seemed to be rather a lot of friendly young ladies who couldn’t afford many clothes. There were flares, and jugglers, and assorted sellers of instant transcendence.

---

It might be thought that the Mended Drum, scene of unseemly scuffles only an hour ago, was a seedy
disreputable tavern. In fact it was a reputable disreputable tavern. Its customers had a certain
rough-hewn respectability - they might murder each other in an easygoing way, as between equals, but
they didn’t do it vindictively. A child could go in for a glass of lemonade and be certain of getting nothing
worse than a clip round the ear when his mother heard his expanded vocabulary. On quiet nights, and
when he was certain the Librarian wasn’t going to come in, the landlord was even known to put bowls of
peanuts on the bar.

The Troll’s Head was a cesspit of a different odour. Its customers, if they reformed, tidied themselves up
and generally improved their image out of all recognition might, just might, aspire to be considered the
utter dregs of humanity. And in the Shades, a dreg is a dreg.

---

Hour gongs were being struck all across the city and nightwatchmen were proclaiming that it was indeed
midnight and also that, in the face of all the evidence, all was well. Many of them got as far as the end of
the sentence before being mugged.

---

The river Ankh, the cloaca of half a continent, was already pretty wide and silt laden when it reached the
city’s outskirts. By the time it left it didn’t so much flow as exude. Owing to the accretion of the mud of
centuries the bed of the river was in fact higher than some of the low lying areas and now, with the snow
melt swelling the flow, many of the low-rent districts on the Morpork side were flooded, if you can use
that word for a liquid you could pick up in a net. This sort of thing happened every year and would have
caused havoc with the drains and sewage systems, so it is just as well that the city didn’t have very many.
Its inhabitants merely kept a punt handy in the back yard and, periodically, built another storey on the
house.
It was reckoned to be very healthy there. Very few germs were able to survive.

---

Belief sloshes around in the firmament like lumps of clay spiralling into a potter’s wheel. That’s how gods
get created, for example. They clearly must be created by their own believers, because a brief resume of
the lives of most gods suggests that their origins certainly couldn’t be divine. They tend to do exactly the
things people would do if only they could, especially when it comes to nymphs, golden showers, and the
smiting of your enemies.

---

YOU ARE AS OLD AS YOU THINK YOU ARE.
“Huh! Yeah? Really? That’s the kind of stupid thing people always say. They always say, My word,
you’re looking well. They say, There’s life in the old dog yet. Many a good tune played on an old fiddle.
That kind of stuff. It’s all stupid. As if being old was some kind of thing you should be glad about! As if
being philosophical about it will earn you marks! My head knows how to think young, but my knees
aren’t that good at it. Or my back. Or my teeth. Try telling my knees they’re as old as they think they are
and see what good it does you. Or them.”

---

Then there’s all that business with goat-headed gods. Most witches don’t believe in gods. They know
that the gods exist, of course. They even deal with them occasionally. But they don’t believe in them.
They know them too well. It would be like believing in the postman.

---

"Small Gods"

And yet there seemed to be a lot of lesser gods around the place. Koomi's theory was that gods come
into being and grow and flourish because they are believed in. Belief itself is the food of the gods. Initially,
when mankind lived in small primitive tribes, there were probably millions of gods. Now there tended to
be only a few very important ones-local gods of thunder and love, for example, tended to run together
like pools of mercury as the small primitive tribes joined up and became huge, powerful primitive tribes
with more sophisticated weapons. But any god could join. Any god could start small. Any god could
grow in stature as its believers increased. And dwindle as they decreased. It was like a great big game of
ladders and snakes.
Gods liked games, provided they were winning.
Koomi's theory was largely based on the good old Gnostic heresy, which tends to turn up all over the
multiverse whenever men get up off their knees and start thinking for two minutes together, although the
shock of the sudden altitude tends to mean the thinking is a little whacked. But it upsets priests, who tend
to vent their displeasure in traditional ways.
When the Omnian Church found out about Koomi, they displayed him in every town within the Church's
empire to demonstrate the essential flaws in his argument.
There were a lot of towns, so they had to cut him up quite small.

---

One of the goddesses had been having some very serious trouble with her dress, Brutha noticed; if
Brother Nhumrod had been present, he would have had to hurry off for some very serious lying down.
"Petulia, Goddess of Negotiable Affection," said Om. "Worshiped by the ladies of the night and every
other time as well, if you catch my meaning."

---

"It's happened before," said the tortoise. "Dozens of times. D'you know Abraxas found the lost city of
Ee? Very strange carvings, he says. Belief, he says. Belief shifts. People start out believing in the god and
end up believing in the structure."
"I don't understand," said Brutha.
"Let me put it another way," said the tortoise. "I am your God, right?"
"Yes."
"And you'll obey me."
"Yes."
"Good. Now take a rock and go and kill Vorbis."
Brutha didn't move.
"I'm sure you heard me," said Om.
"But he'll . . . he's . . . the Quisition would-”
"Now you know what I mean," said the tortoise. "You're more afraid of him than you are of me, now.
Abraxas says here: `Around the Godde there forms a Shelle of prayers and Ceremonies and Buildings
and Priestes and Authority, until at Last the Godde Dies. Ande this maye notte be noticed.' "

---

An hour later the lion, who was limping after Brutha, also arrived at the grave. It had lived in the desert
for sixteen years, and the reason it had lived so long was that it had not died, and it had not died because
it never wasted handy protein. It dug.
Humans have always wasted handy protein ever since they started wondering who had lived in it.
But, on the whole, there are worse places to be buried than inside a lion.

---

"Men at Arms"

Sham Harga smiled, or at least moved various muscles around his mouth. Sham Harga had run a
successful eatery for many years by always smiling, never extending credit, and realizing that most of his
customers wanted meals properly balanced between the four food groups: sugar, starch, grease and
burnt crunchy bits.

---

"Maskerade"

Of course, Granny Weatherwax made a great play of her independence and self-reliance. But the point
about that kind of stuff was that you needed someone around to be proudly independent and self-reliant
at. People who didn't need people needed people around to know that they were the kind of people
who didn't need people.

It was like hermits- There was no point freezing your nadgers off on top of some mountain while
communing with the Infinite unless you could rely on a lot of impressionable young women to come along
occasionally and say 'Gosh'.

---

If civilization were to collapse totally and the survivors were reduced to eating cockroaches, Madame Dawning
would still use a napkin and look down on people who ate their cockroaches the wrong way round.

---

"Feet of clay"

One of the advantages of a life much longer than average was that you saw how fragile the future was.
Men said things like 'peace in our time' or 'an empire that will last a thousand years', and less than
half a lifetime later no one even remembered who they were, let alone what they had said or where the
mob had buried their ashes. What changed history were smaller things. Often a few strokes of the pen
would do the trick.

---

It seemed to be a chronic disease. It was as if even the most intelligent person had this little blank
spot in their heads where someone had written: 'Kings. What a good idea.' Whoever had created humanity
had left in a major design flaw. It was its tendency to bend at the knees.

---

'What Better Work For One Who Loves Freedom Than The Job of Watchman. Law Is The Servant of
Freedom. Freedom Without Limits Is Just A Word,' said Dorfl ponderously.

---

"Hogfather"

Lord Downey of the Guild said, 'We took pity on him because he'd lost both parents at an early age.
I think that, on reflection, we should have wondered a bit more about that.'

---

There were lessons later on. These were going a lot better now she'd got rid of the reading books about
bouncy balls and dogs called Spot. She'd got Gawain on to the military campaigns of General Tacticus,
which were suitably bloodthirsty but, more importantly, considered too difficult for a child. As a result his
vocabulary was doubling every week and he could already use words like 'disembowelled' in everyday
conversation. After all, what was the point of teaching children to be children? They were naturally good at it.

---

The path to wisdom does, in fact, begin with a single step.
Where people go wrong is in ignoring all the thousands of other steps that come after it.

---

"Jingo"

Very small sandwiches and even smaller talk

---

In a red shirt with silly baggy sleeves, red tights, some kind of puffed shorts in a style that went out
of fashion, by the look of it, at the time when flint was at the cutting edge of cutting edge technology,
a tiny shiny breastplate and a helmet with feathers in it.

---

“The last continent”
Wizards lack the HW chromosome in their genes. Feminist researchers have isolated this as the one which allows people to see the washing-up in the sinks before the life forms growing there have actually invented the wheel.

---

"The fifth elephant"

My gods, yes, thought Vimes. You can find your average, amateur killers on every street. They're mostly
deranged or drunk or some poor woman who's had a hard day and the husband has raised his hand once
too often and suddenly twenty years of frustration takes over. Killing a stranger without malice or
satisfaction, other than the craftsman's pride in a job well done, is such a rare talent that armies spend
months trying to instil it into their young soldiers. Most people will shy away from killing people they
haven't been introduced to.

Silvana

Saudações Fernando_silva
Saudações aos demais participantes


Fernando, vc sempre me surpreende... :)

Fã de Terry...rsrsr :)



abraços fraternais
da Silvana

Fernando_Silva

Silvana disse:
Fernando, vc sempre me surpreende...

Fã de Terry...rsrsr

Por que a surpresa? Que incompatibilidade de pensamento você vê?

Fernando_Silva

O problema com revoluções que pretendem libertar "O Povo"

"Night Watch"

Vimes had spent his life on the streets, and had met decent men and fools and people who'd steal a penny from a blind beggar and people who performed silent miracles or desperate crimes every day behind the grubby windows of little houses, but he'd never met The People.

People on the side of The People always ended up disappointed, in any case. They found that The People tended not to be grateful or appreciative or forwardthinking or obedient. The People tended to be smallminded and conservative and not very clever and were even distrustful of cleverness.

And so the children of the revolution were faced with the ageold problem: it wasn't that you had the wrong kind of government, which was obvious, but that you had the wrong kind of people. As soon as you saw people as things to be measured, they didn't measure up.

Percival

Fernando_Silva disse: Por que a surpresa? Que incompatibilidade de pensamento você vê?

Nem eu entendi.

Ah ele teve alguns livros lançados pela Conrad:

http://www.estantevirtual.com.br/b/terry-pratchett/a-cor-da-magia/2190850134

Provavelmente eu consigo ainda encontrar.

Silvana

Saudações Fernando_silva
Saudações aos demais participantes


Nenhuma contradição... Eu sugeri isso ?!

Na verdade sempre suspeitei que sua erudição tinha uns traços conhecidos...rs


Outra Notícia...


Fãs criam petição pedindo que a Morte devolva Terry Pratchett

O fã Anthony Walton disse estar assinando a petição "simplesmente porque Pratchett teria apreciado a tolice das notícias das últimas 48 horas". Já J C Melia comentou: "Ninguém realmente está morto até que as ondas que causou no mundo se desvaneçam".


http://oglobo.globo.com/cultura/livros/fas-criam-peticao-pedindo-que-morte-devolva-terry-pratchett-15584653



abraços fraternos a ti
da Silvana

Fernando_Silva

Dr_Whooves disse: Ah ele teve alguns livros lançados pela Conrad:

http://www.estantevirtual.com.br/b/terry-pratchett/a-cor-da-magia/2190850134

Os dois primeiros livros, "The color of magic" e "The light fantastic" viraram filme na Inglaterra. Ficaram bem fieis, embora a história tenha sido encurtada um pouco para caber: