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Saturday 21st June 2008:-

In the current edition of the Waterstones magazine, ''Books Quarterly no. 29'' (For non-UK readers, Waterstones are a major British bookselling chain) there is an four-page feature  where Terry Pratchett is  interviewed by Neil Gaiman.

The interview contains this interesting snippet concerning the next-but-one-or-two Discworld novel:-

''Currently I'm writing '''Unseen Academicals''', which people will think is ostensibly about football on Discworld but then will turn out to be about something else, which you could see all the time but didn't notice. That's the best kind of irony''

So after the movies, rock music and big business/economics, Terry is now putting a Discworld gloss on professional sport - probably something not a million miles away from football, whose absurdities and pomposities and prima donnas  really deserve a duffing-over!

As a pointer, note that Hamilton Academicals were, and remain, a lower-ranking professional football (soccer) side in Scotland, originally formed in the 19th century as a sporting club for gentlemen studying at the nearby University...

As of March 1, 2009 Amazon.com lists this book as having a publication date of [http://www.amazon.com/Unseen-Academicals-Terry-Pratchett/dp/0061161705/ref=sr_1_7?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1235934333&sr=1-7 October 6, 2009].

The cover art shown on Amazon.com shows an old-fashioned football and a group of hands, one of which is skeletal, one pair of which is orangutan.

This is a different take on the possible cover art:-


[[Image:UnseenAcademicals10.jpg]]

Close-up of artist at work - note Vetinari (as referee?) looking vaguely disgruntled next to the cheerleader.  (Watch where her eyes are looking. She's flirting with him. He must be aware...) Who apparently is not Angua, but a new character. One suggestion, and this was only ever a suggestion,  is that the blonde cheerleader is Mrs [[Whitlow]] indulging her latest craze, after the magical rejuvenation therapy on XXXX that left her looking thirty or forty years younger.  Other speculation is that the two cheerleaders are both entirely new characters. According to the French-language Discworld site [http://www.vademecum-dm.com/index.php Vade Mecum], Terry has been interviewed thusly:-

"Terry spoke about imagining '''''Unseen Academicals''''', and it went like this: he thought about the man who replaces the University's candles. Then it came to him that that man had an assistant, a young girl, and he had to write about her. So it could be that new character!" 

According to Paul Kidby's website, the book reprises the character of Professor Hicks from {{MM}}, and a new race called "Orks" emerges on the disc: a representative member is in the football team in the cover artwork...

(merci bien a Anilori)
[[Image:UnseenAcademicals9.jpg]]

More [http://www.paulkidby.net/PhotoGallery.html More here]

== The Cover Blurb:-  ==

THe publishers have now released the blurb that goes on the inside cover of the book-jacket. It reads:-

"Football has come to the ancient city of Ankh-Morpork - not the old fashioned, grubby pushing and shoving, but the new, fast football with pointy hats for goalposts and balls that go going when you drop them. And now, the wizards of Unseen University must win a football match, without using magic, so they're in the mood for trying everything else.

The prospect of the Big Match draws in a street urchin with a wonderful talent for kicking a tin can, a maker of jolly good pies, a dim but beautiful young woman, who might just turn out to be the greatest fashion model there has ever been, and the mysterious Mr Nutt (and no one knows anything much about Mr Nutt, not even Mr Nutt, which worries him, too. As the match approaches, four lives are entangled and changed for ever.
Because the thing about football - the important thing about football - is that it is not just about football.

Here we go! Here we go! Here we go!" 

So the blonde on the cover is now likely to be the ''"greatest fashion model there has ever been"'' ? 

Again, thanks to the tireless researchers at VadeMecum (especially the O Grand Master, who is an Oh Grand Master in the same way [[Bilious]] is an ''Oh God'')  for discovering this and bringing it to our attention!

Anyone wishing to read an extract of Unseen Academicals need only go here. [http://browseinside.harpercollins.com/index.aspx?isbn13=9780061161704&WT.mc_id=REFL_MSGBRDS_UNSEEN_092309]

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