On the off chance you or anyone is interested, a post with long excerpts from an interview with Terry, and a link to the yet far longer interview, here. (Post also has long excerpts from a yet longer interview with Ursula Le Guin, plus a bit of Joss Whedon, plus several other sf-related links, some folk music history links, and some words by me; it was a potpourri of sf bloggy goodness!)

One of various other Pterry-related posts, with more from him, here.

No Steve Brust posts, sorry. But the post about Pam Noles and Le Guin and the whitewashing of the Earthsea movie I just gave in another thread here does also have links to Emma Bull’s LiveJournal post on why she hated the Battlestar Galactica mini-series, and rebuttals from many people.

Thanks for the plug, Dave Weeden. The check isn’t in the mail.

DKos is full of people who automatically dismiss anyone who disagrees with them as “spouting Republican talking points” and being the Republican’s “natural born houseboys”.

Pterry almost certainly isn’t a libertarian. Although, given that Vetinari tends to use relatively light state intervention, he may have classical liberal tendencies.

10. Cheryl, Pterry left the nuclear power industry before privatisation / deregulation. Nationalised industry has always had its own form of corporate bullshit.

14/29. Ronald, had you tried asking one?

23. Abb1 – obviously wrong; ever heard of BT? (A good riposte to the central thrust of Going Postal, by the way.)

24. Ginger – sounds like an excellent descripiton of some libertarians!

25. Matt – I like his female characters, too. I think comparatively few of his protagonists fit the “the small army 20-year old males with identity crises” description – none of the ones that make it into series form.

26. Peter – “spout republican talking points” – is dKos down? (Ditto 28. Abb1 – “natural-born houseboys”)

27. Seth – your essay seems to consist of 80% inability to distinguish between “use” and “initiate”, and 20% inability to believe that Libertarians mean what they say.

30. Scott – no market failure in Friday. See response to 23. Abb1 for appraisal of Going Postal.

34. Clew – doesn’t Vetinari go out in the daylight? (Mind you, don’t the trolls get around that problem by copious use of sun oil?)

35. Jim – some libertarians simply think that however bad the market’s response to a given problem is, the government’s response is likely to be worse.

36. Still – most such states have strong warlords – which are a form of government themselves.

38. Cheryl – add “as long as it doesn’t directly hurt other people” and I’d agree.

I bought Thud a couple of days ago, but haven’t read it yet.

Way to warn about a spoiler.

I admit to being a bit amused at all the philosophical forehead-wrinkling over what Going Postal is “about”. Pratchett’s books—especially the newer ones—go after BS in all kinds of philosopies, not just conservative ones.

Gilt isn’t Libertarianism personified; he’s a con man and a thief, and he’s a threat to Vetinari. (The idea of Vetinari as a benevolent dictator is a little, er, odd….one with Ankh-Morpork’s best interests in mind, okay, but benevolent?) His goal isn’t to run the clacks in an efficient manner that just happens to threaten the creaky, barely-existing Post Office. von Lipwick’s dream of learning “three-card monte with banks” from Gilt is pretty clear about any actual political philosophy Gilt may have—which is to say, none.

On Vetinari and power and Pterry’s attitude to same, “Guards! Guards!” seems to me to be the key text. If I understand the “moral”, Vetinari has run down the night watch to a crew of three—two corrupt and incompetent with a captain whose natural pessimism has been reduced to alcoholic depression. This state of affairs very nearly does for both Vetinari and Ankh-Morpork. In the later books a sober Vimes expands the Watch to include trolls, dwarves, zombies, werewolves, etc (“Men at Arms”) and starts a secret police service (“Maskerade”). It’s clearly implied that Ankh-Morpork is richer and safer for these innovations.

As far as I can make out, the philosophy of American Libertarians can be neatly summed up as, “I have the right to do whatever I want and to Hell with the rest of you.”

The correlation is undeniable but I´m not sure you have the direction of causation right…

Pratchett’s approach to government seems to be almost entirely pragmatic. He’ll poke fun at anything but the message in the end is typically “whatever benefits everyone is best”.