“If it so happens that on page 175 there is some statement which technically is actually incorrect,” he continues, “or it’s incorrect because it’s been simplified - and there’s a fine line between simplifying things and oversimplifying things - I honestly don’t mind that much, because I don’t think that has a big effect on getting the main message over.” Readers can always look it up on the internet or ask an expert. “When you unwrap some casual sentence in a popular science book you find hidden depths, which range from ‘everybody says this but it’s not true’ to ‘this is incredibly controversial and nobody knows what’s going on’.”
Additionally, Stewart lauds Terry Pratchett’s storytelling influence on his own writing. To quote the article:
His prose is gradually becoming more relaxed, with a chattier, dressed-down tone and wry asides, a development he puts down to his collaborations with Terry Pratchett and Jack Cohen on a series of books about science in Discworld.
“I learnt a lot of this from Terry Pratchett,” he says. Pratchett is a mine of information about how to tell stories, and in working with him you pick this stuff up. “If you get it wrong he will tell you,” Stewart laughs. “It changes your view of what you’re trying to do and how you’re trying to do it.” When starting a book he used to ask “What’s the interesting stuff I ought to be covering?”, now his question is “What’s the story?” The story comes first, and the mathematics is chosen to fit.
Ian Stewart has collaborated with Terry Pratchett and Jack Cohen on the Science of Discworld books (the most recent of which is the Science of Discworld III: Darwin’s Watch).
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