Silly question re. publication date

[JulieDouglass]

I've just signed up to this forum partly to answer a question which has been nagging at me for quite a while. I have a vivid memory of reading "The Colour of Magic" in the 5th Form at school in 1975. The book was loaned to me by a school friend and I remember meeting "the luggage" and Rincewind and finding the whole concept of Discworld so marvellously different from the rather pompous fantasy novels I was consuming at the time.

Now, everythnig I've read tells me that "The Colour of Magic" was published in 1983, by which time I had graduated from university and got a job in the bowels of a museum. This time disorder has been bothering me ever since I found out the real publ. date of the first Discworld novel. Does anyone have any genuine suggestions as to what I was actually reading in 1975?

 

[Tonyblack]

Hi Julie - welcome to the site. I don't know what to say other than it really was published 1983. Terry's first published book was 'The Carpet People' in 1971 followed by 'Dark Side of the Sun' in 1976.

I can only assume you got your copy via LSpace.

 

[poohcarrot]

Hi Julie

It's not a question of what you were reading, it's more a question of what you were smoking.

 

[Tristan]

Maybe she's taking dried frog pills.

But seriously, it's really weird, but I guess Discworld goes further than the boundaries of time of space...

 

[theoldlibrarian]

unless you broke in to terry's house and found an early edition of his fantasies in writing it must be L-space.
Although our brains often confuse us in those ways. Sometimes I would read 2 similar books and then think that they are the same book.

 

[Who's Wee Dug]

Hi Julie, Deja vous maybe or foward sight, but I can see why you are puzzled,Mnnnm.

the mind boggles.

 

[Tristan]

Hi Julie, Deja vous maybe or foward sight, but I can see why you are puzzled,Mnnnm.

the mind boggles.

Déjà lu

 

[chris.ph]

welcome to the site julie with that type of memory you will fit right in

 

[Jan Van Quirm]

Hi I'm Jan Van Quirm and I'm a Jilly Cooper-a-holic

Jilly's nothing to do with Terry of course but when I first cultivated my shameless 'habit' I tore through her early and not quite so horsy books and found that one of them, Octavia, I'd read before when I was about 13. It drove me mad trying to work out there the hell I'd read it before the publication details (I knew I'd not read the book at all before). Then finally I remembered that Ms. Cooper used to write serial fiction for teen mags and I'd read a truncated version of it in Petticoat severalm years before (this is going way back! )

Maybe Terry did something similar and did a short story or serialisation version of CoM before he got famous?

 

[JulieDouglass]

Publication date

I'm now convinced that linear time is an illusion, as after reading the book - and it was a book loaned to me by Lizzy Nurse's older brother Charlie - I didn't read any Terry Pratchet books until about 1990 when after much urging by friends, I finally read Mort. It then dawned on me that I'd already met some of the characters. If it happened now I would put it down to old age and too many chickens in the loft. Never mind, I'd hoped there was a genuine earlier version published in the SW of England.