News Archive

A place to archive news stories from the “recent news” section on the Main Page. So far we’ve added as far back as 2023.

2024

Tuesday, April 23rd, 2024: HarperCollins announces that new Harper Perennial paperback editions of the Discworld books are being published in the US, beginning with the “Wizards collection”. The collections will use the same Leo Nickolls covers as the UK Penguin editions, and be released in the same “collections”. Each collection will be released separately, with the Tiffany Aching books being last in Fall 2025. (harpercollins.com)

Monday, April 22nd, 2024: The Terry Pratchett estate announces a theme for "Terry Pratchett Day" (Pratchett's birthday, April 28th) for 2024: "Start in the Wrong Place". They promise more details to come, including resources for celebrating the day. (@PratchettOnline on Twitter; terrypratchett.com)

Thursday, February 29th, 2024: The Terry Pratchett estate and UK-based games company Modiphius Entertainment announce that Modiphius has acquired the license to produce new Discworld tabletop games, beginning with a roleplaying game, Adventures in Ankh-Morpork, which will be crowdfunded via Kickstarter in “late 2024”. Modiphius have launched a Discworld fan survey as part of their early development of the game. (terrypratchett.com; Dicebreaker)

Wednesday, February 28th, 2024: The Terry Pratchett Estate reveal a “Forty Years of Discworld” logo for the “Year of Discworld” celebration, previously announced on the anniversary itself (November 24th, 2023). No other details yet. (terrypratchett.com)

Thursday, December 14th, 2023: After Amazon released a Good Omens song list containing a clue, Good Omens HQ officially announce that a third and final season of Good Omens has been confirmed. (Variety)

Thursday, December 14th, 2023: The Pratchett Estate announce via a cover reveal that a new edition of The Last Hero with a cover design by Leo Nickolls matching the 50 Years of Terry Penguin editions will be published on 29th February 2024, completing the set of Discworld novels in this edition. This edition will also have a “new text design”, suggesting the book will have new layout and typesetting - previously too expensive an endeavour given the way the original was created. (Gollancz website)

Friday, November 24th, 2023: In a tweet marking the fortieth anniversary of The Colour of Magic, the official Terry Pratchett Estate account announced that this would be the start of a “Year of Discworld” in celebration, promising “more on that soon...”

Tuesday, November 21st, 2023: Marking the fortieth anniversary of The Colour of Magic a little early, Rob Wilkins and Neil Gaiman celebrated the life and work of Terry Pratchett in an event at the British Library, “The Worlds of Terry Pratchett”, hosted by Kat Brown (who hosted a similar event with Rhianna Pratchett and Gabrielle Kent for the launch of Tiffany Aching’s Guide to Being a Witch at the start of the month). Video of the talk is available from the Living Knowledge Network. (terrypratchett.com)

Friday, July 7th, 2023: Speaking with SFX magazine, Neil Gaiman reveals that the second season of Good Omens is not based on the unwritten sequel he planned with Terry Pratchett. It is instead a new story that forms a “connective tissue” between the original and the planned sequel, which would form the basis of a third season if one is made. (SFX article)

Friday, June 30th, 2023: The Telegraph, and subsequently several other right-wing news outlets, run outraged stories about the new Penguin audiobook editions of the Discworld novels including “content warnings”. The audiobooks were published in batches since April 2022, more than a year earlier, and the “warning” in question is: “The first book in the Discworld series – The Colour of Magic – was published in 1983. Some elements of the Discworld universe may reflect this.” As quoted in the article, a Penguin spokesperson responded: “This is not a trigger warning, but rather a note providing some context for the listener. The author’s estate is aligned.” (If you're looking for actual content warnings for Pratchett books, try looking them up at The Storygraph.)

Thursday, June 1st, 2023: Rhianna Pratchett, Paul Kidby, Gabrielle Kent, Puffin Books and official Discworld channels all release more details of Tiffany Aching’s Guide to Being a Witch, including the cover, some hints about the contents, and that it will be published in October 2023 to celebrate twenty years since the first Tiffany Aching book, The Wee Free Men. (terrypratchett.com summary; The Bookseller article)

Friday, May 12th, 2023: Rhianna Pratchett and Paul Kidby announce via social media that they are collaborating with game maker and author Gabrielle Kent on Tiffany Aching’s Guide to Being a Witch, to be published through Puffin Books. Pratchett and Kent have co-written this “in-world guide to aspiring witches everywhere”, illustrated by Kidby. They shared the title and a promotional image, but no release date, promising more information soon. Kidby mentioned he had been working on it for the past year and "recently". Kent also tweeted about it, mentioning that it was the Discworld books that had made her want to be a writer. (@rhipratchett tweet; @paulkidby tweet; @GabrielleKent tweet)

Wednesday, May 10th, 2023: YouTube channel The Hillywood Show publish their elaborate Good Omens parody video, featuring members of the original television cast and Neil Gaiman himself handing over the release date of season two of the show to Crowley (played by Hilly Hindi). This was the official announcement that season two will premiere on Amazon Prime on 23 July 2023. (Good Omens Parody by The Hillywood Show on YouTube)

Monday, February 27th, 2023: The Terry Pratchett estate announces A Stroke of the Pen, a new collection of Pratchett’s early short stories for newspapers from the 1970s and 1980s, to be published in October 2023. These twenty stories were written under pseudonyms (mostly “Patrick Kearns”) and have not been previously republished. They were discovered thanks to fan Chris Lawrence, who had one of the original newspaper stories framed in his house, with the rest discovered by Pat and Jan Harkin by searching through old newspapers. Rob Wilkins described this as “nothing short of a miracle” and said this was “the last ’new’ Pratchett material we are ever likely to find.” (terrypratchett.com; BBC)