Book:A Blink of the Screen

A collection of short fiction from 1963 to 2009, with cover art showing Terry sitting at a desk, while the back shows a slightly cartoony drawing of Death

Contents

• Foreword by A. S. Byatt
• Non-Discworld Shorter Writings

1. "The Hades Business" (1963)
2. "Solution" (1964)
3. "The Picture" (1965)
4. "The Prince and the Partridge" (1968)
5. "Rincemangle, The Gnome of Even Moor" (1973)
6. "Kindly Breathe in Short, Thick Pants" (1976)
7. "The Glastonbury Tales" (1977)
8. "There's No Fool Like an Old Fool Found in an English Queue" (1978)
9. "Coo, They've Given Me the Bird" (1978)
10. "And Mind the Monoliths" (1978)
11. "The High Meggas" (1986)
12. "Twenty Pence, with Envelope and Seasonal Greeting" (1987)
13. "Incubust" (1988)
14. "Final Reward" (1988)
15. "Turntables of the Night" (1989)
16. "#ifdefDEBUG + `world/enough' + `time'" (1990)
17. "Hollywood Chickens" (1990)
18. "The Secret Book of the Dead" (1991)
19. "Once and Future" (1995)
20. "FTB" (1996)
21. "Sir Joshua Easement: A Biographical Note" (2010)

• Discworld Shorter Writings

1. "Troll Bridge" (1992)
2. "Theatre of Cruelty" (1993)
3. "The Sea and Little Fishes" (1998)
4. "The Ankh-Morpork National Anthem" (1999)
5. "Medical Notes" (2002)
6. "Thud-A Historical Perspective" (2002)
7. "A Few Words from Lord Havelock Vetinari" (2002)
8. "Death and What Comes Next" (2004)
9. "A Collegiate Casting-Out of Devilish Devices" (2005)
10. "Minutes of the Meeting to Form the Proposed Ankh-Morpork Federation of Scouts" (2007)
11. "The Ankh-Morpork Football Association Hall of Fame playing cards" (2009)

• Appendix

1. Deleted extract from "The Sea and Little Fishes" (1998)

Annotation

The collection contains a short story, Final Reward, in which an author of heroic fantasy fiction decides to kill off the barbarian hero who made his literary name, so as to focus on more serious writings. And then the Barbarian Hero turns up on his doorstep to complain about being killed off....

Compare this story told about Robert E. Howard, creator of the ur-barbarian hero, Conan of Cimmeria.

"He's alone one night, and he feels a shadow overtake him from behind, and he knows that Conan stands behind him, with a large axe. And Conan tells him "Stay there, and write!""

(Quoted in the journal of weird things, Fortean Times, January 2013, p53.)