Terry Pratchett
20 Quotations from Terry Pratchett
| adamantium n. | 2012 Long Earth xlviii. 321 The ultimate ‘black box’, you might say, is in the belly of the ship, armoured in an alloy that I confidently believe makes adamantium look like putty and will, I am sure, remain totally unscathed even in the event of a meteor strike of mass-extinction proportions. |
| astronavigation n. | 2001 Last Hero 157 ‘We ought to get him home as soon as possible. What’s the usual direction? “Second star to the left and straight on ’til morning”?’ ‘I think that may very probably be the stupidest piece of astronavigation ever suggested.’ |
| avian n. | 1981 Strata 37 We looked it up in the Guide to Sapient Species, but there is only one avian, and this is not it. |
| BEM n. | 1981 Strata 46 I told that agency computer on Real Earth to pick three people that fitted my specifications, and it gave me three names. The damn thing never bothered to say that two of them were BEMs. |
| collapsium n. | 1981 Strata 27 The temperature fell like collapsium. |
| colony planet n. | 1981 Strata 8 According to the files, they were both from colony planets so new the bedrock had hardly dried, while she was manifestly from Earth. |
| con n. | 1994 The SF Kick in Interzone (#81) Mar. 26/2 (interviewed by Stella Hargreaves) There’s plenty of people out there who read sf and fantasy as part of a balanced reading diet and who don’t think of themselves as fans, and who'd probably go pale at the thought of spending a weekend at a con. |
| hubward adv. | 1983 Colour of Magic 5 There are, of course, two major directions on the disc: Hubward and Rimward. |
| hubward adv. | 1998 Carpe Jugulum (2000) 47 ‘Where the hell’s Muntab?’…‘Several thousand miles away, Mrs. Ogg. But it has ambitions Hubward.’ |
| interspace n. | 1981 Strata 176 You don’t expect me to get us into interspace from the disc surface?… We wouldn’t have a chance! |
| laser rifle n. | 1981 Strata 60 Marco loped in, tugging at his helmet with two hands. Another one held a laser rifle, salvage from the other half of the ship. |
| little green man n. | 1990 Wings (1991) 140 Humans find it a lot easier, really, to believe in little people from the sky than little people from the Earth. They would prefer to think of little green men than leprechauns. |
| mundane n. 2 | 1994 The SF Kick in Interzone (#81) Mar. 26/2 (interviewed by Stella Hargreaves) Have you heard the term ‘mundanes’? It’s a throwaway word for everybody but ‘us fans gathered here today.’ |
| neutronium n. | 1981 Strata 19 You plate the underside with neutronium for gravity. |
| overmind n. | 1987 Equal Rites (1990) 27 The overmind of the forest made impromptu searching as hard as listening for a waterfall in a thunderstorm. |
| planetary engineering n. | 1981 Strata 10 He…brought out a book…. ‘This is one of the authorities on planetary engineering.’ |
| stunner n. | 1981 Strata 13 When he had wiped the blood out of his eyes she was looking down at him and holding a stunner. |
| terraform v. | 1981 Strata 11 We build worlds, we don’t just terraform planets. Robots could do that. We build places where the imagination of human beings can find an anchor. |
| time police n. | 1996 Johnny & the Bomb 16 I wouldn’t mind joining the police if they were time police. You’d go back and say, ‘Hey, are you Adolf Hitler?’ and when he said, ‘Achtung, that’s me, ja’…Kablooeee! With the pump-action shotgun. End of problem. |
| waldo n. | 1981 Strata 160 It was a robot, a big one shaped the best shape for a robot. Square. One waldo arm was groping in a square hole in the alcove’s metal wall. |