{"id":1579,"date":"2009-01-23T13:21:31","date_gmt":"2009-01-23T13:21:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.benjeapes.com\/?p=1579"},"modified":"2022-08-26T08:30:13","modified_gmt":"2022-08-26T08:30:13","slug":"pratchett-games-and-lists","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.benjeapes.com\/index.php\/2009\/01\/pratchett-games-and-lists\/","title":{"rendered":"Pratchett, games and lists"},"content":{"rendered":"

To the Unicorn Theatre last night for the latest of the Studio Theatre Club’s Pratchett plays. The group has gone back to its roots with a revised version of the very first such play that it did, in 1991, a few months before I came to Abingdon and a year before Bonusbarn was born.\u00a0Wyrd Sisters: The Director’s Cut<\/em>.<\/p>\n

The usual high standards; nigh on perfect casting all round. It was a shame they left Death out but you can’t have everything. Plays also can’t include lines of narrative text: I remember from the novel the lovely line “they turned to see a dwarf trying to loom over them”. Also difficult on stage would have been the bit where someone tries to sit in a chair occupied by the ghost of the dead king. “Is someone sitting here?” \/ “Yes …”<\/p>\n

On the way back home Bonusbarn gave an interesting insight into the politics of gamery, or the workings of his own mind, or both, speaking contemptuously of the people sitting in the row in front, who I would guess to have been students. “I\u2019m never going to be that nerdy. They were talking about\u00a0Magic: The Gathering<\/a>. That\u2019s a\u00a0card game.”<\/p>\n

\u2026 which led on to a discussion of which is better, a technologically accomplished piece of work graphical like World of Warcraft, where everything is laid out for you on screen, or a proper role playing game (you may see where my prejudices lie) where you may have a few props and enabling items but the main action takes place in the imagination.<\/p>\n

\u2026 which led on to a reminder (following from his suspicious identification of my ability to recognise authentic player-talk) that I was in the university SFSoc in my day, even though I hardly ever went to a meeting because they clashed with scuba diving on Thursday evenings and so I just turned up to the end of term video weekends.<\/p>\n

[Sigh] “Were you the president?”<\/p>\n

“No.”<\/p>\n

“Did the president have long hair and a trench coat?”<\/p>\n

Um. Thinks. I do remember a long(ish) haired president. I also remember a trench coat. I forget if they were the same person. But \u2026<\/p>\n

Hm.<\/p>\n

Which leads on to something almost completely different but saves me doing two blog posts where one will do. Apparently the Guardian is having one of those prescriptive moments that the national press do so love and is listing the 1000 books everyone must read. They\u2019ve now got down to science fiction and fantasy titles. There\u2019s 149 of them (for the sake of convenience Discworld, Narnia, His Dark Materials etc. count as one title each) and the full list is kindly\u00a0summarised here<\/a>\u00a0so I pinched it.<\/p>\n

Some I’ve never heard of; some (I’m looking at you, Rowling) I’m thinking “what??” With the possible exception of\u00a0Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell\u00a0I’m thinking that any book published in the last five years is too recent to say everyone should read it; I’d say published this century except that China Mieville’s there (though not with the title I’d have chosen). But anyway, here’s the list again, with the ones I\u2019ve read (60\/149 = 40%) in bold.<\/p>\n

Douglas Adams: The Hitchhiker\u2019s Guide to the Galaxy (1979)<\/strong>
\nBrian W Aldiss: Non-Stop (1958)<\/strong>
\nIsaac Asimov: Foundation (1951)<\/strong>
\nMargaret Atwood: The Handmaid\u2019s Tale (1985)
\nMargaret Atwood: The Blind Assassin (2000)
\nPaul Auster: In the Country of Last Things (1987)
\nJG Ballard: The Drowned World (1962)<\/strong>
\nJG Ballard: Crash (1973)<\/strong>
\nJG Ballard: Millennium People (2003)
\nIain Banks: The Wasp Factory (1984)<\/strong>
\nIain M Banks: Consider Phlebas (1987)<\/strong>
\nClive Barker: Weaveworld (1987)<\/strong>
\nNicola Barker: Darkmans (2007)
\nStephen Baxter: The Time Ships (1995)<\/strong>
\nGreg Bear: Darwin\u2019s Radio (1999)
\nWilliam Beckford: Vathek (1786)
\nAlfred Bester: The Stars My Destination (1956)<\/strong>
\nRay Bradbury: Fahrenheit 451 (1953)<\/strong>
\nPoppy Z Brite: Lost Souls (1992)
\nCharles Brockden Brown: Wieland (1798)
\nAlgis Budrys: Rogue Moon (1960)<\/strong>
\nMikhail Bulgakov: The Master and Margarita (1966)<\/strong>
\nEdward Bulwer-Lytton: The Coming Race (1871)
\nAnthony Burgess: A Clockwork Orange (1960) [seen the film; does that count?]
\nAnthony Burgess: The End of the World News (1982)
\nEdgar Rice Burroughs: A Princess of Mars (1912)
\nWilliam Burroughs: Naked Lunch (1959)
\nOctavia Butler: Kindred (1979)
\nSamuel Butler: Erewhon (1872)
\nItalo Calvino: The Baron in the Trees (1957)
\nRamsey Campbell: The Influence (1988)
\nLewis Carroll: Alice\u2019s Adventures in Wonderland (1865)<\/strong>
\nLewis Carroll: Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There (1871)<\/strong>
\nAngela Carter: The Passion of New Eve (1977)
\nAngela Carter: Nights at the Circus (1984)
\nMichael Chabon: The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay (2000)
\nArthur C Clarke: Childhood\u2019s End (1953)<\/strong>
\nGK Chesterton: The Man Who Was Thursday (1908)
\nSusanna Clarke: Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell (2004)<\/strong>
\nMichael G Coney: Hello Summer, Goodbye (1975)
\nDouglas Coupland: Girlfriend in a Coma (1998)
\nMark Danielewski: House of Leaves (2000)
\nMarie Darrieussecq: Pig Tales (1996)
\nSamuel R Delaney: The Einstein Intersection (1967)
\nPhilip K Dick: Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (1968)<\/strong>
\nPhilip K Dick: The Man in the High Castle (1962)<\/strong>
\nThomas M Disch: Camp Concentration (1968)
\nUmberto Eco: Foucault\u2019s Pendulum (1988)<\/strong>
\nMichel Faber: Under the Skin (2000)
\nJohn Fowles: The Magus (1966)
\nNeil Gaiman: American Gods (2001)<\/strong>
\nAlan Garner: Red Shift (1973) [didn\u2019t understand it, but read it]<\/strong>
\nWilliam Gibson: Neuromancer (1984)<\/strong>
\nCharlotte Perkins Gilman: Herland (1915)
\nWilliam Golding: Lord of the Flies (1954)<\/strong>
\nJoe Haldeman: The Forever War (1974)<\/strong>
\nM John Harrison: Light (2002)
\nNathaniel Hawthorne: The House of the Seven Gables (1851)
\nRobert A Heinlein: Stranger in a Strange Land (1961)<\/strong>
\nFrank Herbert: Dune (1965)<\/strong>
\nHermann Hesse: The Glass Bead Game (1943)
\nRussell Hoban: Riddley Walker (1980)
\nJames Hogg: The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner (1824)
\nMichel Houellebecq: Atomised (1998)
\nAldous Huxley: Brave New World (1932)<\/strong>
\nKazuo Ishiguro: The Unconsoled (1995)
\nShirley Jackson: The Haunting of Hill House (1959)
\nHenry James: The Turn of the Screw (1898)
\nPD James: The Children of Men (1992)
\nRichard Jefferies: After London; Or, Wild England (1885)
\nGwyneth Jones: Bold as Love (2001)
\nFranz Kafka: The Trial (1925)
\nDaniel Keyes: Flowers for Algernon (1966)<\/strong>
\nStephen King: The Shining (1977)
\nMarghanita Laski: The Victorian Chaise-longue (1953)
\nJoseph Sheridan Le Fanu: Uncle Silas (1864)
\nUrsula K Le Guin: The Left Hand of Darkness (1969)<\/strong>
\nUrsula K Le Guin: The Earthsea series (1968-1990)<\/strong>
\nStanislaw Lem: Solaris (1961)
\nDoris Lessing: Memoirs of a Survivor (1974)
\nCS Lewis: The Chronicles of Narnia (1950-56)<\/strong>
\nMG Lewis: The Monk (1796)
\nDavid Lindsay: A Voyage to Arcturus (1920)
\nKen MacLeod: The Night Sessions (2008)
\nHilary Mantel: Beyond Black (2005)
\nMichael Marshall Smith: Only Forward (1994)
\nRichard Matheson: I Am Legend (1954)<\/strong>
\nCharles Maturin: Melmoth the Wanderer (1820)
\nPatrick McCabe: The Butcher Boy (1992)
\nCormac McCarthy: The Road (2006)
\nJed Mercurio: Ascent (2007)
\nChina Mi\u00e9ville: The Scar (2002) [why this and not Perdido St Station?]<\/strong>
\nAndrew Miller: Ingenious Pain (1997)
\nWalter M Miller Jr: A Canticle for Leibowitz (1960)<\/strong>
\nDavid Mitchell: Cloud Atlas (2004)
\nMichael Moorcock: Mother London (1988)
\nWilliam Morris: News From Nowhere (1890)
\nToni Morrison: Beloved (1987)
\nHaruki Murakami: The Wind-up Bird Chronicle (1995)
\nVladimir Nabokov: Ada or Ardor (1969)
\nAudrey Niffenegger: The Time Traveler\u2019s Wife (2003)<\/strong>
\nLarry Niven: Ringworld (1970)<\/strong>
\nJeff Noon: Vurt (1993)
\nFlann O\u2019Brien: The Third Policeman (1967)
\nBen Okri: The Famished Road (1991)
\nGeorge Orwell: Nineteen Eighty-four (1949)<\/strong>
\nChuck Palahniuk: Fight Club (1996)
\nThomas Love Peacock: Nightmare Abbey (1818)
\nMervyn Peake: Titus Groan (1946)<\/strong>
\nFrederik Pohl & CM Kornbluth: The Space Merchants (1953)<\/strong>
\nJohn Cowper Powys: A Glastonbury Romance (1932)
\nTerry Pratchett: The Discworld series (1983- )<\/strong>
\nChristopher Priest: The Prestige (1995)<\/strong>
\nPhilip Pullman: His Dark Materials (1995-2000)<\/strong>
\nFran\u00e7ois Rabelais: Gargantua and Pantagruel (1532-34)
\nAnn Radcliffe: The Mysteries of Udolpho (1794)
\nAlastair Reynolds: Revelation Space (2000)<\/strong>
\nKim Stanley Robinson: The Years of Rice and Salt (2002)
\nJK Rowling: Harry Potter and the Philosopher\u2019s Stone (1997)<\/strong>
\nSalman Rushdie: The Satanic Verses (1988)
\nJoanna Russ: The Female Man (1975)
\nGeoff Ryman: Air (2005)
\nAntoine de Sainte-Exup\u00e9ry: The Little Prince (1943)
\nJos\u00e9 Saramago: Blindness (1995)
\nWill Self: How the Dead Live (2000)
\nMary Shelley: Frankenstein (1818)<\/strong>
\nDan Simmons: Hyperion (1989)<\/strong>
\nOlaf Stapledon: Star Maker (1937)<\/strong>
\nNeal Stephenson: Snow Crash (1992)<\/strong>
\nRobert Louis Stevenson: The Strange Case of Doctor Jekyll and Mr Hyde (1886)<\/strong>
\nBram Stoker: Dracula (1897)<\/strong>
\nRupert Thomson: The Insult (1996)
\nJRR Tolkien: The Hobbit (1937)<\/strong>
\nJRR Tolkien: The Lord of the Rings (1954-55)<\/strong>
\nMark Twain: A Connecticut Yankee at King Arthur\u2019s Court (1889)
\nKurt Vonnegut: Sirens of Titan (1959)<\/strong>
\nHorace Walpole: The Castle of Otranto (1764)
\nRobert Walser: Institute Benjamenta (1909)
\nSylvia Townsend Warner: Lolly Willowes (1926)
\nSarah Waters: Affinity (1999)
\nHG Wells: The Time Machine (1895)<\/strong>
\nHG Wells: The War of the Worlds (1898)<\/strong>
\nTH White: The Sword in the Stone (1938)<\/strong>
\nAngus Wilson: The Old Men at the Zoo (1961)
\nGene Wolfe: The Book of the New Sun (1980-83)<\/strong>
\nVirginia Woolf: Orlando (1928)
\nJohn Wyndham: Day of the Triffids (1951)<\/strong>
\nJohn Wyndham: The Midwich Cuckoos (1957) [what happened to The Chrysalids?]<\/strong>
\nYevgeny Zamyatin: We (1924)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

To the Unicorn Theatre last night for the latest of the Studio Theatre Club’s Pratchett plays. The group has gone back to its roots with a revised version of the very first such play that it did, in 1991, a … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19,1],"tags":[29,204,190,20,328,227,201],"class_list":["post-1579","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books","category-bens-life","tag-books-2","tag-family","tag-games","tag-life","tag-play","tag-reading","tag-science-fiction"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.benjeapes.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1579","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.benjeapes.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.benjeapes.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.benjeapes.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.benjeapes.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1579"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.benjeapes.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1579\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4165,"href":"https:\/\/www.benjeapes.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1579\/revisions\/4165"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.benjeapes.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1579"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.benjeapes.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1579"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.benjeapes.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1579"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}