A Stroke of the Pen: The Lost Stories by Terry Pratchett review a fantasists formative years

The Discworld creator’s short tales from the 70s and 80s reveal a young talent bursting with invention and wit

When Terry Pratchett’s first Discworld novel appeared, it was a revelation. Just as Douglas Adams shifted the foundations of sci-fi, Pratchett rejuvenated fantasy. Fantasy can boast world-beating authors, but hungry readers have also had to suffer portentous tales of men with swords declaiming at one another across prose that takes half a page to say: “Yeah, but are you a werewolf, though?” – or, indeed: “Hello.” Pratchett was and remains the opposite of that.

Like Adams, Pratchett knows what his point is and gets to it. True to his journalistic roots, he picks a great title and cracks on. His prose is light-footed, melodious, conversational and deceptively deep. His plotlines are inventive, generous and even offer fully formed female characters. Underlying his work is a characteristic sense that any thoughtful human might consider their species with weary fondness and cynical optimism. Like the Inklings before him, Pratchett understands the monumental power of story and deploys it with relish. And he’s funny, all the kinds of funny: slapstick, funny names, absurdity, black humour, existential humour, scientific humour, dad jokes, puns …

Plus paragraph breaks for comedy timing.

A Stroke of the Pen is a postmortem collection of short fiction, somewhat alarmingly described in the publicity as “unearthed”. It’s very early work, but Pratchett is already unmistakably Pratchett. Does he redefine the form? No – but he’s not trying to. Written for the Western Daily Press – a publication with an obvious appetite for Christmas content – these pieces rattle along entertainingly and sometimes nudge the profound. Published during the 70s and 80s using the pseudonym Patrick Kearns, they conjure a strange, distant time when unions could have power, aristocrats could be penniless, eccentricity and science had room to breathe – and so did the short story. If you feel fantasy is a debased literary snack food, fit only for solitary kids and adults who still play Dungeons & Dragons, this book may not convert you. Still, there’s much here to delight the open-minded, the fantasy aficionado and the Pratchett completist – including hints of the Hogfather and an early glimpse of Morpork. The long legacy of fantasy short fiction is well served.

The book comes equipped with two introductions. First, Neil Gaiman reassures those wondering why an author wouldn’t have published this work during their lifetime. Gaiman gently divides the man from the voice, remembers both and sets the scene. Colin Smythe usefully describes the search for what amount to Pratchett’s lost apprentice pieces.

It’s traditional to start anthologies with a bang and we do here with How It All Began… in which a curious caveman’s foundational inventions irritate his companions. “He’d have probably set fire to the whole world if we let him” has the neatly prophetic ring of later Pratchett. We then enter a chaotic, more contemporary world with shades of Ealing comedy. Nature misbehaves, as does suburbia. Small town Blackbury and its bizarre residents are explored in various adventures, some more successful than others. Government offices are invaded by ghosts and a humdrum holiday upends Mr Brown’s whole existence.

Mr Brown’s tale offers a doorway where no doorway should exist. It’s a joyful moment of muscular creation, like CS Lewis’s lamp-post sprouting in the wood, or Flann O’Brien revealing the policemen who tend reality’s mechanisms. The whole piece is deft, unsettling, charming, and seems to ask for exploration in a novel, even a series of novels.

Pratchett was, of course, writing these pieces within a word limit. The multiple Blackbury tales are perhaps an attempt to evade constraints by a writer who clearly needs more elbow room, but a setting without its own agency may have become a constraint in itself. Like the wonderful Immediate Jungle Seeds, all these pieces are full of explosive life: an expansive time-travel narrative, proliferating gnomes, a suddenly talking horse and a ragtag quest across a sketchy version of what would become Discworld. But often the threads whirling wonderfully outwards have to be snipped and finished with a knot before they create the full, wild tapestry they suggest. The couple of weaker stories might have blossomed with enough space and the longer Morpork quest could have slowed from 300mph to a more reasonable 90, given enough space to roam.

Long-form prose clearly suited Pratchett best, but this collection still delivers worthwhile gifts. Those who know his voice will see how quickly it was established and glimpse how fierce and large it would become. For newcomers, this is a fine Pratchett tasting menu. If we’re left wanting more of this particular colour of subversion, ambition and fun, it’s partly because of editors long gone, but mainly because we’d be very odd not to.

AL Kennedy’s most recent book is We Are Attempting to Survive Our Time (Vintage)

A Stroke of the Pen: The Lost Stories by Terry Pratchett is published by Doubleday (£20). To support the Guardian and Observer order your copy at guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply

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