Adaptation and Terry Pratchett--Essay Collection
deadline for submissions:
October 31, 2025
full name / name of organization:
Anne Hiebert Alton & William C. Spruiell
contact email:
anne.hiebert.alton@cmich.edu
source: https://call-for-papers.sas.upenn.edu/cfp/2025/06/03/adaptation-and-terry-pratchett-essay-collection
We invite proposals for an edited collection of essays on Adaptation and the work of Terry Pratchett. The book proposal will be submitted to Palgrave Macmillan or Bloomsbury Academic’s Perspectives on Fantasy series in the Spring of 2026.
Perhaps best known for his 41-book Discworld series, Terry Pratchett was also the author of numerous other works of fantasy and science fiction. While enormously popular during his lifetime, since his premature death in 2015 his works have only grown in critical statue, with several scholarly articles, books and book chapters, and collections of essays appearing in the last decade.[1] However, none have paid extensive attention to the multitude of adaptations of Pratchett’s works. Spanning areas including drama, film (animated, live-action, and CGI), spoken word recordings and performances, graphic and musical arts, and games (video, RPG, and board), these many and varied adaptations embody Linda Hutcheon’s notion of remediated narrative: the “repetition without replication” that brings together “the comfort of ritual and recognition with the delight of surprise and novelty” (7, 173).[2]
Ideally this volume will include essays that discuss a variety of types of adaptations, as well as showcase not only Pratchett’s Discworld novels but also his other works, including Nation, the Johnny Maxwell series, the Bromeliad trilogy, The Carpet People, various short stories, and perhaps Good Omens. Topics might focus on such areas including, but not limited to, the following:
Theoretical issues:
- Adaptation, Interdisciplinarity, Reception, Inter-semiotic translation, etc.Is Pratchett’s work intrinsically adaptable? Is there something about it that makes it particularly appealing to experience through adaptation?
- Are some Pratchett works more adaptable than others?
- Given that adaptation necessarily involves change, are there patterned aspects or common threads for what Pratchett adaptations focus on (fidelity debates aside), regardless of mode?
- How do Pratchett adaptations work? How might they change the experience of the source text, and through that the ground on which any further interpretation is based?
Modes
- How do the potentials of different forms/modalities (or languages) interact with Pratchett’s texts – do they encourage adaptation into some forms at the expense of others? Do they affect the choice of what to adapt beyond what the economics of sales figures would suggest?
- What characteristics of Pratchett’s texts pose particular difficulties or challenges for adaptation, or (conversely) enable interestingly expanded possibilities for meaning in the new form?
- How do results from particular adaptations vary between modes/forms?
Roles of participants
- What kinds of roles do various participants in Pratchett adaptations – the initial author, the adaptor(s), the performer(s), the designer(s), the collaborator(s), etc. – play?
- What contributions might or should they make or be expected to make?
Treatments of specific source texts and their adaptations
- How are Pratchett’s works transformed through adaptation? What happens to the source text’s story as a result of adaptation?
- What are some of the contrasts between various adaptations of the same source text – e.g. Guards! Guards! comic book vs. stage play vs. television series vs. game(s); or The Amazing Maurice musical vs. CGI film; or Small Gods graphic novel vs. BBC radio drama vs. instrumental music rendering – into different modes, and why/how do these matter?
- If, as Sanders suggests, adaptations “highlight often perplexing gaps, absences and silences within the original” (126), what gaps can be identified in Pratchett adaptations and how do various adaptations engage with these gaps?[3]
Deadlines/Timeline: Proposals of a maximum of 500 words, along with brief author bios, should be sent by Friday 31 October 2025 to Professors Anne Hiebert Alton and William C. Spruiell via email at anne.hiebert.alton@cmich.edu. Notification of acceptance will be sent by 31 December 2025. Please send any questions to the same address.
[1] In addition to numerous articles, other published work includes Daniel Lüthi’s monograph Mapping a Sense of Humor: Narrative and Space in Terry Pratchett’s Discworld Novels (2023); book chapters in Caroline Webb’s Fantasy and the Real World in British Children’s Literature (2015) and Andrew Rayment’s excellent Fantasy, Politics, Postmodernity: Pratchett, Pullman, Miéville and Stories of the Eye (2014); and at least six collections of essays: Discworld and the Disciplines: Critical Approaches to the Terry Pratchett Works (ed. Anne Hiebert Alton and William C. Spruiell, 2014); Philosophy and Terry Pratchett (ed. Jacob Held and James South, 2014); Discworld and Philosophy: Reality is Not What It Seems (ed. Nicholas Michaud, 2016); Terry Pratchett's Narrative Worlds: From Giant Turtles to Small Gods (ed. Marion Rana, 2018); Terry Pratchett’s Ethical Worlds: Essays on Identity and Narrative in Discworld and Beyond (ed. Kristin Noone and Emily Lavin Leverett, 2020); and Power and Society in Terry Pratchett’s Discworld: Building a Fantasy Civilization (ed. Justine Breton, 2025).
[2] Linda Hutcheon, A Theory of Adaptation, 2nd ed., Routledge, 2013.
[3] Julie Sanders, Adaptation and Appropriation, 2nd ed., Routledge, 2016.
Last updated June 8, 2025
