Като говорим за нещо, каквото и да е, на Пратчет, трябва винаги да сме сигурни, че ще има значителна ебавка със жанра, независимо за кой точно ще настане въпрос. Точно тази книжка се явява саркастичния трибют към всичко сайфайско обично и международно, като дори и аз можах да зацепя паралелите с Дюна и азимовските роботи, даже май имаше оттук-оттам намеци за стопаджийските вселенски закони. А колко други шегички не съм и усетила – направо не ми се мисли, но все някъде ще има някой , който ще е обърнал по-професионално внимателен поглед върху въпроса – като Гост в ревюто му за Трубадурите. За мен Тъмната страна се оказа едно почти фентъзи преживяване, което въпреки пространните си на места обяснения на мъгливи теории свързани с време-пространството и междувидовите политически и етноложки отношения, не успя нито да ми досади, нито отврати, както например успя да ме огорчи Хайнлайн съвсем наскоро.Дали заради доста добрата история, или новата орда откаченяци на килограм, или невероятните хрумки и шегички, влизащи винаги на правилното място – това е моя вид сай фай, от който не ми се гади след първите няколкостотин страници обяснения на необяснимото. Пратчет някак си хем успява да ти даде нужната за жанра теоретична обосновка на вселената , хем не ти казва нищо научно сухо или реалистично противно. В един странен свят, имащ далечно родство със земния вид, се шматка един млад и безотговорен принц, на който му е писано да заеме твърде важна позиция, което кара всичко живо от три галактики в околовръст, да се юрне да го убива по разнообразно дезинтегриращ начин. Обаче нашето момче се оказва сякаш наплюто от късметлийските богове, и се изплъзва от магове, бомби, отрови, роботи убийци и всякаква друга иноплатенятска гмеж . Наградата в цялото упражнение е да се видят създателите на междувидието, очевидно надарени с твърде развито чувство за хумор особено по отношение на външния вид, а краят е меко казано смущаващ.Книжката може да се възприеме съвсем лесно като маргинален жанр между фантастиката и фентъзито, за което може би си има и термин за средностилие – да речем сайънс фентъзи или нещо от типа. Но носи удоволствието за всеки фен, дори и за крайните фентъзийници като мен, ама не е за хора оперирани от чувство за хумор, или такива натоварили с много лична история и преживявания някоя класика във фантастичния жанр. Просто същите няма да разберат съкровището на различната гледна точка, и ще се натъжат, даже обидят от твърде неуважителното на моменти отношение към Вселената и всичко там дето е останало.Та с ведър поглед и усмивка всичко Пратчетско се постига, или преглъща, зависи. Аз съм вече пратчет-фен, то се е видяло.
In my most humble opinion everybody should be always (I mean in each moment of a human being life) reading at least: one spiritual book, a (maybe non) fiction book and one written by Terry Pratchett. Now, you may get a wrong idea of what is going on up here, but in a near future I will write something about the first two “must be reading”. Now you are here to read about the third one.If you ever read a book by Terry Pratchett you may have noticed a feeling of “okeyness” within your day to day life. For instance, I am thinking in the Discworld books. There you can read such things that whatever you are going through it may not be such a big deal. It makes you widen your focus, see your issues from different points of view, and there are moments when you stop seeing them. Definitely they are essential books for these stressful days.Let me go for the one I chose for this occasion: “The Dark Side of The Sun”. I bought this book three or four moths ago, when I was two thousand miles from home (yes, I just have searched in google miles vs km). I was on Erasmus doing a thesis about let's say “amazing stuff”. In one of those moments when I felt somehow homesick I read that Pratchett had passed out. That made me feel the urgency to go and buy one of his books. I did so. However I did not read it until a month ago, when I was looking for some “stress cure”, nonsense therapy, or... have some fun. Not only I found the dose of whatever I was looking for, I also found a really well built world in a quite short book. I found a bit of Asimov. I found Gods. I found perfectly illogical things. I found puppies raining from the sky. I found a book to read again.I picked this particular book because I was looking for a book not related with the Discworld series. However it was somehow related. To avoid saying too much about it I will say that I had the feeling that “The Dark Side of The Sun” is strongly related with the book “Small Gods” (I did not read this last one). Terry Pratchett builds a world (in fact a whole universe) with more than fifty races, including robots, humans and big guys (lakes, planets, puppies...). Some time paradoxes, conspiracies and the most tasty ingredient; a prophecy. In fact, in the world everything is already written down, everything happens because it has to happen. It has been already calculated. Among those calculations there is one that will change everything. You may agree that in our world, chaos is something relative, unpredictable and... chaotic. However in a world where the future can be computed it has a complete different roll. It is not so relative, not so unpredictable and... not so chaotic. In fact in a world like this, prophecies are more than prophecies. We are dealing with Prophecies. At this point I would like to remind you that we are dealing with Terry Pratchett. It happens to be that some predicted actions do not evolve as expected (as predicted), what leads us to some chaos. And just to put the lid on it, some predictions around the “Prophecy” fail.Conclusion: chaos. If you want something that makes you smile, something that deals with flying shoes, magic swords, chaos and randomness, get some Terry Pratchett book. I am sorry, I am biased, I do not think I can say anything negative about his books (maybe too chaotic but even though you get used to it).Highly recommended.
What do You think about The Dark Side Of The Sun (1988)?
Gosh fellas, I just haven't been up to writing reviews lately. I am damn far behind. There's very little left in my head of the impressions I got from the story beyond the story itself. It was slight, but good.Going into The Dark Side of the Sun, I knew what to expect. I've read enough of Pratchett's non-Discworld books to understand how his skewed humor and perspective translates outside that world. I also remember how the earliest Discworld novels felt, so I figured the potential and the serendipitous coming together of his plot characters would be fuzzy. I wasn't wrong. But I didn't care. It wasn't really funny or fully-fleshed out (the ancillary characters might have been posts), but it was very readable and enjoyable, especially spotting the elements that would be incorporated in to Discworld. I wouldn't recommend it as straight soft sf novel, but I would to curious fans interested in how Pratchett developed as a writer.
—Myles
Having gone back and read (and been pleasantly surprised by) Strata recently I knew it would only be a matter of time before I went even further back in to Pratchett's formative publishing years and happily I was not disappointed, especially as now I am a fan of science fiction rather than a guy who loves Discworld and was willing to give anything written by Terry Pratchett a go.I remembered really enjoying this one, quite a bit more than Strata in fact, and that is still true all these years later. The fun that is had with Isaac Asimov's Laws of Robotics and the concept of The Foundation sequence would have been completely lost on me first time around for example but the influence of those books is clear and (aside from Pratchetts obvious talent for telling a story) I would suggest that is a primary reason for this being a highly entertaining space adventure.The way ideas have been recycled from this book into Strata and then into the Discworld books is not just fascinating but also an enjoyable experience for me as a matured reader, whereas I remember finding the stuff that would later appear in the Discworld as being a bit dull in comparison when I read this the first time round.The fact that this book was published a year before the initial publication of The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy was a bit of a slap in the face for me as I felt certain whilst reading that Pratchett had been influenced by Douglas Adams, yet it appears that perhaps the style of Pratchett may have actually influenced the space-faring life of Arthur Dent instead.I can see the flaws of the work (there are a few, sure) and perhaps if I wasn't a massive fan of the author already I might not think so highly of what could probably be classified as run of the mill sci-fi, BUT there are so many positives in this book as a precurser to the Discworld that I enjoyed it a lot more than I, perhaps, should.
—Tfitoby
The Dark Side of the Sun by Terry Pratchett is the story of a young man named Dom who has been appointed to a powerful position on his planet, but unfortunately there have been multiple attempts on his life. It has been foretold that it is his fate to discover the world of the race of beings that seeded life in the universe and there are those that would prefer that this information not get out. This book follows Dom's adventures as he sets out on his quest to find answers and fulfill his destiny.I have to say that I honestly didn't enjoy this book very much. It was completely different in style to everything else I've ever read by Terry Pratchett and if it weren't for the use of some terminology that was also used in his Discworld series, I wouldn't have even known I was reading one of his books. The humor that I've come to know and love in his writing just wasn't present in this book. There were some things that seemed like they were meant to be funny, but really just weren't. I did try to be open-minded about reading something more serious by Pratchett, but the lack of humor in the book wasn't the only thing wrong with it. I just found the book very hard to follow and I found myself feeling lost and confused at least a third of the time when reading it if not more. I think it would have helped if the author had spent more time explaining the various alien races in more detail as well as the technology used. I also felt the ending to the book was weird and really not that satisfying. It's a shame because the premise of this story was interesting and I did like how ancient alien theory was worked into the story, but it could have been done so much better than it was. At least it was a fairly short read so I didn't waste too much of my time on it. I really wouldn't recommend this book unless you're a hardcore Pratchett fan who absolutely has to read everything he's ever written.
—Kythe42
