> This shift coincided with a decrease in adjective TTR below a defined threshold, occurring approximately ten years before Pratchett’s formal diagnosis.
The diagnosis was announced in 2007, meaning the shift occurred in 1997. 1997 was after Jingo and before Carpe Jugulum and The Last Continent, and 2007 was after Making Money and before Unseen Academicals.
The Last Continent is the first identified in the paper as below the cutoff for adjectives which they use to identify the start of the decline.
My own feeling is that many of his strongest works were before 2000, though he had several excellent ones after (the City Watch and first two Moist von Lipwig; I know the ongoing Tiffany Aching series are good, but in terms of writing I found them not as intricate as his earlier books.) I found Snuff harder to read, and Raising Steam, sadly, very difficult. I could tell the genius was there, but my memory of the writing was that it used much longer sentences, had less intricate plotting, and far fewer puns and wordplay. It was this book that made me really feel a sense of grief for what was happening to him, and it was this one where I first felt there was an observable threshold that was crossed.
I have sometimes wondered if it would be respectful if another author was brought into assist in editing or rewriting his last two novels. I know his unpublished works were destroyed, and any writing assistance is not his own voice. Yet I feel, in a sense, seeing books with such clear decline could in itself have let his legacy down. I don't know what his own view was or would be. While I admire Sanderson' continuance of the Wheel of Time, I would not wish such a drastic change in tone for some similar effort for the last of Pratchett's works. Yet I deeply wish that his last books were, somehow, different, more representative of him that I feel they were, in that his illness (in a sense, of course!) let him down. They cause me sadness.
GNU Terry Pratchett. (My own site sends this too.)
Personally I just ignore them(Raising Steam and Snuff). There are too many inconsistencies with how Vimes and Lipwig are characterized in those books, that I can't see them as the same characters. I haven't started the Shepherd's Crown for the same reason.
I don't think that any fan of his is under any illusion that those books are up to his standard, but he has so many good books that his legacy will be safe.
I hope they've controlled it for an increasing proportion of the later books being aimed at Young Adult audiences...
(Though I guess that cuts both ways and you could argue that writing more simply using the established parts of your legendarium is exactly what you might aim for if you were less consistently able to handle complex plot threads and novel worldbuilding)
> Eight titles were excluded from the analysis due to them being either shorter than the other full-length novels (Eric, 1990; The Last Hero, 2001), or because they are part of his titles for younger readers (The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents, 2001; The Wee Free Men, 2003; A Hat Full of Sky, 2004; Wintersmith, 2006; I Shall Wear Midnight, 2010; The Shepherds Crown, 2015).
Didn't the Oblivion NPC he contribute to get a bunch of features to help him deal with the problems he faced playing the game? I never met the man, but I think he'd be appreciative of the studies if they help people who suffer from dementia and/or Alzheimer’s.
He seemed pretty curious about the world, and was pretty candid about his disease. Not to put words in his mouth, but I suspect he'd have been interested in this. I can imagine him have Lord Vetinari detect a decline from someone's writing and make some subtle move as a result!
> This shift coincided with a decrease in adjective TTR below a defined threshold, occurring approximately ten years before Pratchett’s formal diagnosis.
The diagnosis was announced in 2007, meaning the shift occurred in 1997. 1997 was after Jingo and before Carpe Jugulum and The Last Continent, and 2007 was after Making Money and before Unseen Academicals.
The Last Continent is the first identified in the paper as below the cutoff for adjectives which they use to identify the start of the decline.
My own feeling is that many of his strongest works were before 2000, though he had several excellent ones after (the City Watch and first two Moist von Lipwig; I know the ongoing Tiffany Aching series are good, but in terms of writing I found them not as intricate as his earlier books.) I found Snuff harder to read, and Raising Steam, sadly, very difficult. I could tell the genius was there, but my memory of the writing was that it used much longer sentences, had less intricate plotting, and far fewer puns and wordplay. It was this book that made me really feel a sense of grief for what was happening to him, and it was this one where I first felt there was an observable threshold that was crossed.
I have sometimes wondered if it would be respectful if another author was brought into assist in editing or rewriting his last two novels. I know his unpublished works were destroyed, and any writing assistance is not his own voice. Yet I feel, in a sense, seeing books with such clear decline could in itself have let his legacy down. I don't know what his own view was or would be. While I admire Sanderson' continuance of the Wheel of Time, I would not wish such a drastic change in tone for some similar effort for the last of Pratchett's works. Yet I deeply wish that his last books were, somehow, different, more representative of him that I feel they were, in that his illness (in a sense, of course!) let him down. They cause me sadness.
GNU Terry Pratchett. (My own site sends this too.)
Personally I just ignore them(Raising Steam and Snuff). There are too many inconsistencies with how Vimes and Lipwig are characterized in those books, that I can't see them as the same characters. I haven't started the Shepherd's Crown for the same reason.
I don't think that any fan of his is under any illusion that those books are up to his standard, but he has so many good books that his legacy will be safe.
I hope they've controlled it for an increasing proportion of the later books being aimed at Young Adult audiences...
(Though I guess that cuts both ways and you could argue that writing more simply using the established parts of your legendarium is exactly what you might aim for if you were less consistently able to handle complex plot threads and novel worldbuilding)
Yes, they did.
> Eight titles were excluded from the analysis due to them being either shorter than the other full-length novels (Eric, 1990; The Last Hero, 2001), or because they are part of his titles for younger readers (The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents, 2001; The Wee Free Men, 2003; A Hat Full of Sky, 2004; Wintersmith, 2006; I Shall Wear Midnight, 2010; The Shepherds Crown, 2015).
Sample size of n=1
Did they compare to authors with long careers who did not develop dementia?
Maybe "decreased lexical diversity" is simply natural artistic progression, and not a bad thing.
A man is not dead while his name is still spoken. GNU Terry Pratchett.
Loved the paper. Would like to try to reproduce it with intelectual political leadership soon.
Politicians have speechwriters, though, so you wouldn't be analyzing who you think you're analyzing.
Speakers go off script, and some do it a lot.
I think it would work ok.
As Donald Trump comes to rely on the teleprompter more and more, his apparent intelligence will only increase.
He seems to stop following it often. Boredom? Changing his mind?
Yeah, but some actually do write most their own words for the most part. It would require some critical analysis for each individual for sure.
The US has some candidates for your research
Eg
https://youtu.be/6ing_Ibuw6s?si=hJXXkAoMArNinfgT
https://youtube.com/shorts/eZLku9hJPR8?si=d54L6OWWBnkLvz9-
Even just doing presidents would give a good dataset, Reagan, Bush Jr, Biden, Trump.
Doesn't load for me, try https://archive.is/dT8Tx
I can't help but feel this is a useful analysis for humanity, but somehow saddening for a fan of the person being analyzed. Almost overly invasive.
Would Sir Terry have appreciated or approved of this?
Didn't the Oblivion NPC he contribute to get a bunch of features to help him deal with the problems he faced playing the game? I never met the man, but I think he'd be appreciative of the studies if they help people who suffer from dementia and/or Alzheimer’s.
He seemed pretty curious about the world, and was pretty candid about his disease. Not to put words in his mouth, but I suspect he'd have been interested in this. I can imagine him have Lord Vetinari detect a decline from someone's writing and make some subtle move as a result!
Now everybody just needs to amass a corpus of 40+ beloved fantasy novels and we will finally have a dementia early warning system.