Terry Pratchett, author of the humorous – and best-selling – Discworld fantasy series, tells Hamish Mackintosh about his computer habits
When did you start using computers? In about 1982. I started with a Sinclair ZX81 which allowed me to do very primitive word processing. Next was an Amstrad CPC464 – the first model with an integral tape drive. It was actually not a bad little machine. I wrote a couple of books on it. Then I graduated to PC.
What are you running now?
Because I have everything networked, defunct machines just become another node on the network. We have a few 400Mhz Pentium IIs – I work in two locations in my house, I have a study and a business office. I also have a couple of older Pentium machines because it costs very little to put a card in and add them to the network. I call one of them “the dog”. Anything I’m a little uncertain of is tried out on “the dog” when it’s cut away from the network.
Could you envisage working without a computer again?
Good heavens no! I used to word-process even in the days of my old Imperial 58 typewriter. I used lots of different coloured typing paper and literally cut and pasted. By the time I came to type what might be the fourth or fifth draft, the manuscript was a very strange looking thing, about 5cm thick and full of paper glued together.
Does it make writing easier?
Yes. I was chairman of the Society of Authors for a while and there is a divide, even now, among authors, between those who won’t touch a keyboard and those that, like me, almost go the other way with technology.
I think the advantage is that everything is so mutable. You can spend your whole life changing sentences if you want. But, because editing is so easy, you can also write on auto-pilot.
Sometimes it’s a good thing to sit there pounding out the stuff straight from your subconscious, but the important thing is that you sit down the next day and carefully go through what you did. So you can use the word processor in several ways and adapt it to your way of working.
Are we over-impressed by modern technology?
I think newspapers are. It seems general Internet use is actually taking off and that’s because people are now finding useful things to do with it.
Yet the idea that the “e-world” was just around the corner has been peddled for about five or six years now. It wasn’t the hype that did this, it’s just that a critical mass has been reached. But it’s not whether or not you can use a computer, it’s whether your granny can use one. Then things become interesting.
Any favourite places on the net?
I think surfing the web is a dull thing. It’s not proper surfing unless you’re going to run into a 4m wall of coral. It’s another one of those stupid terms we have to make sitting on your arse all evening sound exciting: “We’re going to boot up the computer.” No you’re not, you’re just going to switch it on. It’s like getting excited about using a telephone!
It’s worth remembering, when we talk about Bill Gates’s brave new world, that there are still people on the planet who have yet to make their first phone call – and they’re probably in the majority.