Making (More) Money

Today from 12:30pm for an hour, Terry Pratchett was in WH Smiths at Plymouth, signing books as part of a promotional campaign for his new release; Making Money. I had popped in Waterstones beforehand to grab a copy of his new book, and also a copy of Good Omens; one of my favorite Pratchett books. I already own a copy but it is a bit dog-eared after years of solid use, so I figured I needed a nice new copy anyway. Its a good book with sophisticated dark humor, and the same style of wacky characters as all of Terry’s other books.

Terry Pratchett signing a copy of his new book; Making Money.

We were all slightly disappointed as Terry was missing his trademark black hat. This surprisingly made him extremely hard to recognize, as you can probably see from the photo above. He was very friendly although he didn’t say anything to me personally. I think I may have somehow offended him with asking him to sign Good Omens, as it is co-written by Neil Gaiman and not one of his usually more popular Discworld series.

The bulk of the queue seemed to consist of the usual super geek types. The ones who enjoy a 48 hour game of Warhammer and argue who would win in a fight between the Silver Surfer and Doctor Doom. I decided to politely avoid these sorts of conversations as I prefer code to comic books. Other than the geeks, there was also an unusually diverse mix of people who I was not really expecting to find in a queue for a book signing.

For those interested, apparently the earlier fight would easily be won by the Silver Surfer. He can create and control cosmic ionizing radiation, whereas Doctor Doom was only mutated by similar byproducts as produced by the Earth’s Van Allen belt. Oh dear for geeks!