In some ways, the story behind this "new" collection of Pratchett's early work is more interesting than many/all of the published contents. As many fans know, Terry worked as a journalist for a large part of his early career. During that time, he also wrote quite a few short stories, many of which were published in magazines and papers in a serialised format. Many of these have gone on to be collected and reprinted in later anthologies, but one slipped through the cracks entirely: The Quest for the Keys.
This solitary story had been published in the Western Daily Press over the course of several months in 1984, a paper that few people knew Pratchett had worked for. The story struck a chord with one young man, though, who carefully clipped it out each week, and later framed the entire thing. Now retired, he reached out to Terry's old editor to find out why his favourite Pratchett short story had never been republished. Well, the reason is that no one knew Terry had written it! With its rediscovery, a quest was launched to obtain the rights and get it republished. Unfortunately, when those paper clippings had been made, they had removed all evidence of when and where the story had been published. No page numbers, no dates, not even the name of the paper was known. The man who had collected the story had a vague idea of when he'd read it, and where (late '70s or early '80s in the South West of England), but those were the only clues.
So a couple of dedicated Pratchett fans took it upon themselves to trawl through the British archives and read every single edition of several regional newspapers. They started in 1972, and worked their way up to 1984. In hindsight, they maybe should have worked their way backwards, but it's a good job they didn't, because as they went through those many, many papers, they found read quite a few other stories, and a few caught their eye. Several were set in a fictional British town (Blackbury) which Pratchett had often used in his own short stories. Others had striking similarities to plot devices or characters that would later reappear in the Discworld series. And they were all written by an unknown author: Patrick Kearns. They took some photos and sent them off to Pratchett's old editor, wondering what was going on.
Well, you probably guessed it already, but Kearns turns out to be a pseudonym of Pratchett's; one that he'd never told anyone about. Apparently he had a couple of these pseudonyms throughout his life, most of which are well known. Why this one was kept secret is unclear, particularly because the Quest for the Keys was written under his own name in the same paper the others were published in (just at the end of his publication history with them). Perhaps he didn't want to be rumbled working for a rival of the company that was employing him? Perhaps he didn't feel these stories were up to his later reputation? Perhaps he just forgot 🤷♀️
Whatever the reason, the result was that the amateur sleuths had uncovered not just one "lost" story, but almost a dozen. Some had been reworked and republished at later dates, adding to the authenticity that these were indeed Pratchett ‒ plus, Kearns is his mother's maiden name ‒ and so permission was sought to produce A Stroke of the Pen: The Lost Stories, finally collecting them in one place and under one, distinctly more real, name.
But what of the contents? What of the stories? Well, they're a mixed bag.
For starters, The Quest for the Keys is so completely different in tone, style, and content to everything written under the name Patrick Kearns, it feels like I should split this review in two. It's much longer than any of the others, with more of a narrative structure. It's also clearly a precursor to the ideas that Pratchett would go on to flesh out in the first Discworld novel, The Colour of Magic. There's no Disc, or Rincewind, or Twoflower, but the story follows the unlikely (and slightly abusive) partnership between a rogue and mildly incompetent wizard with a hulking behemoth of a barbarian fighter, who slowly proves to have more brains than at first is apparent. Together, they are trying to find the five keys that will unlock some ancient treasure; and by "together", I mean the wizard teleports the warrior into a near-death experience and lets him fight his way back out, only returning him to safety once he is in possession of a key. As a story, it's not particularly original or interesting, but it's got an interesting structure and some clever ideas. I can see why it would have caught someone's attention and caused a few people to save it over the years ‒ it's definitely a step above the normal sci-fi and fantasy tropes that were typically serialised.
It will be most interesting to Discworld fans for the proto-ideas it contains. The wizard is a resident of Morepork city, for instance. Or the fact that one of the destination is, in fact, our reality; the "key" here being the child Alan Key, who then follows the barbarian around through the last couple of quests, glibly quipping away and viewing the whole thing as a bit of a daydream fantasy or joke, all of which is reminiscent both of Rincewind's trip to our realm (I forget if this The Colour of Magic or The Light Fantastic, but I think the latter) and the much later way that children generally act, particularly around Susan, Death's daughter, in her nanny job. There's a certain Pratchett quality to these characters.
There's also plenty of Pratchett's satirical take on fantasy. We have the realm of Shangri-Larf, a utopia presided over by the Joke Monks, which is a little under-baked (and a touch racist), but still has a very Discworld feel to it. Or the way he skewers the archetype of the witch living in her gingerbread cottage, pointing out that bakery-themed magic maybe doesn't have a hugely practical application 😂 The result is a fun, quirky story that elicits the occasional smile or chuckle, in a very Pratchett way, but which remains Pratchett-lite.
And then there is, well, everything else. The collected works of "Patrick Kearns". These range in quality a lot, but also all show hints of the writer that Pratchett would become. You can tell that he's experimenting with his writing style and authorial voice. You can also tell that he's writing to hit a word count and within tight deadlines. The ideas are there, but they're often either incomplete, or several have been awkwardly mashed together in a way that does none of them justice (e.g. The Fossil Beach, which is an almost-clever time travel tale with some really lovely ideas about potential side effects of the technology, but also some unnecessarily tropey and confused elements, which are fun in their own right, but feel awkward included here). There's also a weirdly large number that are Christmas themed 🤷♀️
The stories are reproduced in chronological order, which adds to this sense of evolving confidence and ability. They certainly improve as you go through them. Pratchett also begins to settle on certain core ideas and motifs over time. The earlier stories are scattergun and completely unrelated to one another. Then there's the Christmas trend, out the back of which they take a distinctly stronger fantasy flavour, before largely focusing on the aforementioned town of Blackbury (in Gritshire), where impossible things happen every day. (It's all a bit Eureka or Twin Pines.)
Then, at the very end, we get two back-to-back which feel distinctly more Pratchett-like than Kearns-like: Mr Brown's Holiday Accident, which sees a regular Joe accountant accidentally slip through the "scenery" of reality and discover that he is, in fact, an actor in an immense play, retelling the history of Earth in several million acts; and then Pilgarlic Towers, which is the first to try and explain everyday phenomena through fantastical means (and reads a lot like Pratchett was having some technical issues with his typewriter 😂).
In total, there are 20 stories to enjoy, and enjoy you will. Even the weakest of them have some small flash of humour or insight that is very Pratchett in its delivery, whilst the strongest are often delightful. Plus, if you're an aspiring writer/author, I honestly think the book does a fantastic job of portraying the evolution of a now beloved titan of the field, from humble beginnings that feel very similar in tone, structure, and concept to my own "best" short stories, up to ideas that are novel, intriguing, and specifically, uniquely Pratchett. There's a lot to learn in the spaces between the words, as a result.