Talk:The Light Fantastic
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[edit] On the "Conan" error...
I thought the US cover meant that the book parodied Conan the Barbarian, not that it included the titular character (and thus was a misprint of Cohen). While I suppose that the possibility exists, I would like to pose an alternate one.
You see, if the cover did have the name of a Discworld character, the blurb wouldn't have made quite as much sense; by its structure, "from the Apocalypse to Cohen the Barbarian" sounds like an explanation of the book's plot. The suggestion made by that line would be that the characters have already prevented the world's end in a previous book and are now facing an unfamiliar foe named Cohen (an inaccurate suggestion, since the Cohen fellow is an ally in the actual story). Further, to someone unfamiliar with the series, Cohen might seem to be a misprint of Conan, since the latter is infinitely more well-known than the former. As the cover text is designed to catch the attention of new readers rather than returning fans, I think this is worth noting.
My theory, thus, is that the blurb is boasting about the wide range of topics joked about in the book- making the statement into "it parodies everything from the Apocalypse to Conan the Barbarian". The events of the book do, indeed, parody end-of-days hysteria, and the parallels 'twixt Cohen and Conan are uncanny at worst, so the statement would be truthful and logical.
Finally, I simply find it more likely that the cover of a humorous fantasy novel would describe its, well, humour, rather than informing the audience that it contains a character whose name sounds vaguely like another famous character. Speaking hypothetically of course, if a Pinky and the Brain DVD blurb said something about, say, "Orson Welles and his Cockney chum", I doubt that anyone would claim that the characters had been mis-identified- because the Brain character is a parody of Welles, and his friend Pinky speaks with a Cockney accent. In this case, the parody character does have a name that is very similar to the original- but if the cover text makes a reference to the original character, I think that it might not be a production goof, or at least that such a possibility is worth consideration.
Thank you for your time.-Tally Solleni (talk) 05:39, 9 January 2008 (UTC)
[edit] Making Terry Pratchett a Featured Article
This is a call to arms to make the Terry Pratchett article a Featured Article. It will greatly help the cause if all the side articles that link from it are of a reasonable standard. Terry Pratchett has around 40 side articles (ie the ones relating to his work) - I don't think they are all expected to be GA (Good Article) standard for TP to become featured, but certain basic elements will be looked at for sure.
A full list of the sub articles is here on the TP talk page: I'm posting this comment on the talk pages of each article on the list. Editors reading may also like to help with the TP article too?
The main issue, especially with smaller articles, is often a finding reasonable amount of citations, and prose can sometimes be a little POV too. Coverage of the topic is probably less important, but of course it needs to be reasonably good. --Matt Lewis (talk) 14:49, 28 January 2008 (UTC)