Only You Can Save Mankind
by Terry Pratchett · first published 1992
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1recommended by
4HN commenters
2013–2026first – last mentioned
25% recommend75% neutral
Twelve-year-old Johnny endures tensions between his parents, watches television coverage of the Gulf War, and plays a computer game called Only You Can Save Mankind, in which he is increasingly drawn into the reality of the alien ScreeWee.
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…harder to get anywhere near as attached, in my opinion; but I don't have kids, so I wonder what they do spend their hard-earned pocket money on instead? For a similar nostalgia trip I recommend reading Only You Can Save Mankind by Terry Pratchett.
on “Immortal ZX Spectrum games” ↗…computer on for three thousand years, they'd be rewarded by a little dot appearing in the middle of the screen, and then a message saying, 'Welcome to Alpha Centauri. Now go home.' " - Terry Pratchett, Only You Can Save Mankind
on “Halo Creator Unveils Its Next Masterpiece, a Persistent Online World ” ↗'Cool's cool.' I don't have my hard copy here and Google is failing me but this is addressed by Terry Pratchett in (I think) Only You Can Save Mankind. The context is some teen-agers talking about how it's not cool to say Yo, or Crucial, or Well Wicked, but Cool is always cool. Would appreciate the full quote if somebody can find!
on “Cool URIs Don't Change (1998)” ↗…like “What’s the first word on line 23 on page 19 of the manual?" and then reset the machine if you didn’t answer them right, so they’d obviously never heard of Wobbler’s dad’s office’s photocopier. -- Only You Can Save Mankind, Terry Pratchett, 1992
on “Defeating a 40-year-old copy protection dongle” ↗