A STROKE OF THE PEN

A collection of lost stories from early in Pratchett’s career.

Commissioned to find episodes of a serial story called “The Quest for the Keys,” enterprising Pratchett scholars Pat and Jan Harkin unearthed this cache of early stories, written for newspapers under the pseudonym Patrick Kearns. “How It All Began…” shows a young caveman inventing fire and troubling the older cavemen with his newfangled ways. Father Christmas quits in “Wanted: A Fat, Jolly Man With a Red Woolly Hat” and can’t seem to find another job where his talents are appreciated. “The New Father Christmas” decides to “ ‘modernize and streamline’ the toyshop,” which means sacking almost all his employees, including the reindeer. In “Mr. Brown's Holiday Accident,” a man drives through what turns out to be the scenery of his life and discovers the scriptwriters and props managers who make things work behind the scenes. As Neil Gaiman writes in his foreword to the volume, these stories are briskly written: “He has a certain amount of space on the newspaper page…and he’s going to start, build and finish his story to the word-count.” There’s not much space for character development or worldbuilding; these short fictions are essentially jokes, setups, and punchlines delivered efficiently, but with glimmers of the Pratchett charm. Several stories set in the fictional town of Blackbury have a genial, tall-tale feel, and the “proto-Discworld” in “The Quest for the Keys” is a true treat.

Like any collection of juvenilia, for committed fans only, but there’s plenty here for them to enjoy.