GNU Terry Pratchett

[LongTomH]

It's been less than a month since beloved author Terry Pratchett left us and tributes to him have been coming in from fans and fellow authors. One of the most touching is the effort to immortalize him through the 'clacks' code GNU:

Going Postal, Pratchett's 2004 Discworld novel, introduces "the clacks" (a form of telegraph, and thought by many fans to be the Discworld's early predecessor to the internet in the books). A murdered "clacksman" called John Dearheart is honoured by other characters with GNU John Dearheart, a piece of code that keeps his name running up and down the clacks.

The letters GNU were a hack to ensure Dearheart's name would continue indefinitely. G meant passing on the message, N meant "not logged" and U meant it must be returned on reaching the end of the line.

GNU Terry Pratchett first popped up as a thread on Reddit. I'm seeing it on siglines on DU now.

Since Sir Terry died, I've been rereading some of my favorites of his work. One that stands out is Good Omens: The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter Witch by Terry Pratchett and his friend Neil Gaiman. I've got the paperback edition, with an angel on the cover, an angel wearing sneakers and a bowtie (Slightly reminiscent of the 10th and 11th Doctors!).



If you remember, Good Omens was Sir Terry and Gaiman's satire on The Book of Revelations, The Omen movie and the Apocalypse in general, all of which richly deserve being satirized!

Some great quotes from Good Omens:

“You're Hell's Angels, then? What chapter are you from?'

'REVELATIONS. CHAPTER SIX.”

“God does not play dice with the universe; He plays an ineffable game of His own devising, which might be compared, from the perspective of any of the other players [i.e. everybody], to being involved in an obscure and complex variant of poker in a pitch-dark room, with blank cards, for infinite stakes, with a Dealer who won't tell you the rules, and who smiles all the time.”