Me too. Noddy was a Pratchett fan. One of his characters, my favorite, has always reminded me of Noddy. The character is a witch named Esmerelda Weatherwax. She is wise, like Noddy was, about life and death, nature, and human foibles.
littlek, have you read pratchett's book (written with neil gaimen) "good omens"
I have indeed. It was fun.
if you haven't already read them, you might enjoy gaiman's books "neverwhere" and "stardust"
I think I tried stardust once. Maybe I'll try it again.
Dwan Ev ceremoniously soldered the final connection with gold. The eyes of a dozen television cameras watched him and the subether bore throughout the universe a dozen pictures of what he was doing.
He straightened and nodded to Dwar Reyn, then moved to a position beside the switch that would complete the contact when he threw it. The switch that would connect, all at once, all of the monster computing machines of all the populated planets in the universe -- ninety-six billion planets -- into the supercircuit that would connect them all into one supercalculator, one cybernetics machine that would combine all the knowledge of all the galaxies.
Dwar Reyn spoke briefly to the watching and listening trillions. Then after a moment's silence he said, "Now, Dwar Ev."
Dwar Ev threw the switch. There was a mighty hum, the surge of power from ninety-six billion planets. Lights flashed and quieted along the miles-long panel.
Dwar Ev stepped back and drew a deep breath. "The honor of asking the first question is yours, Dwar Reyn."
"Thank you," said Dwar Reyn. "It shall be a question which no single cybernetics machine has been able to answer."
He turned to face the machine. "Is there a God?"
The mighty voice answered without hesitation, without the clicking of a single relay.
"Yes, now there is a God."
Sudden fear flashed on the face of Dwar Ev. He leaped to grab the switch.
A bolt of lightning from the cloudless sky struck him down and fused the switch shut.
(Fredric Brown, "Answer")
Just read a new Niven book he wrote in tandem with Brenda Cooper. The book covers 10s of thousands of years. Cyrogenics allows for deep space travel. People are warmed to do various jobs, carefully controled nanobots keep them young even while warm. The main character makes a planet by crashing moons of a gassy giant together. They need workers and so they allow breeding on the new planetoid. The book turns from a basis of physics to one of psychology/sociology as the people born on the new planet fight for some kind of equality with those who were born on Earth. Meanwhile, everyone is dealing with solar flares, earthquakes, and less than ideal atmospheric conditions.
Loved it.
It was, but it took some time to read - little dry, maybe.
