A Blink of the Screen

Collected Short Fiction

By: Terry Pratchett, A. S. Byatt - introduction

Narrated by: Michael Fenton-Stevens, Stephen Briggs

A collection of shorter fiction from Terry Pratchett, spanning the whole of his writing career from schooldays to Discworld and the present day.

In the four decades since his first book appeared in print, Terry Pratchett has become one of the world’s best-selling and best-loved authors. Here for the first time are his short stories and other short form fiction collected into one volume. A Blink of the Screen charts the course of Pratchett’s long writing career: from his schooldays through to his first writing job on the Bucks Free Press, and the origins of his debut novel, The Carpet People; and on again to the dizzy mastery of the phenomenally successful Discworld series.

Here are characters both familiar and yet to be discovered; abandoned worlds and others still expanding; adventure, chickens, death, disco, and actually, some quite disturbing ideas about Christmas, all of it shot through with his inimitable brand of humour. With an introduction by Booker Prize-winning author A. S. Byatt

©2012 Terry and Lynn Pratchett (P)2012 Random House Audiobooks

For the collector who can't bear a hole...

I have most of the titles in various anthologies but there were a couple of holes this book filled. It is fantastic to have them all together and so well narrated.
From the first published story he wrote at 13, to the Drabble, to the story that fits into the Long Earth and various other favourites, this shows the skill and inventiveness of this marvellously talented author.
(The author notes with some of the stories are useful to understand the chronolgy of time and the progress of his prowess.)
I am so pleased to have stumbled over this quite be accident while searching for 'Nation'. Well done Audible.

Expected a bit more

More or less two-thirds of the book consists out of loose short fiction stories Terry Pratchett wrote over the span of decades. A third of the stories takes place in the well-known Discworld milieu. While there were one or two really good stories in the first two-thirds of the book, including his very first published story that he wrote age 13, I didn't warm up to most of them. While Michael Fenton-Stevens did a wonderful job in reading these stories, content-wise it felt a bit mediocre. Don't get me wrong, Pratchett plays with brilliant ideas, yet it is not his best writing.

I enjoyed most of the Discworld short stories, that said I am positively prejudiced towards those. Stephen Briggs was his own brilliant self in bringing these stories to life.

If you need something relaxing and which is good for a chuckle and occasional laugh, I would recommend "A Blink on the Screen." However, don't expect a masterpiece. On the other hand, Pratchett is Pratchett and worth listening to.