Did Terry Prachett also help write Good Omens?
Good Omens
Terry Pratchett said:
I think this is an honest account of the process of writing "Good Omens". It was fairly easy to keep track of because of the way we sent discs to one another, and because I was Keeper of the Official Master Copy I can say that I wrote a bit over two thirds of "Good Omens". However, we were on the phone to each other every day, at least once. If you have an idea during a brainstorming session with another guy, whose idea is it? One guy goes and writes 2,000 words after thirty minutes on the phone, what exactly is the process that's happening? I did most of the physical writing because:
Initially, I did most of Adam and the Them and Neil did most of the Four Horsemen, and everything else kind of got done by whoever – by the end, large sections were being done by a composite creature called Terryandneil, whoever was actually hitting the keys. By agreement, I am allowed to say that Agnes Nutter, her life and death, was completely and utterly mine. And Neil proudly claims responsibility for the maggots. Neil's had a major influence on the opening scenes, me on the ending. In the end, it was this book done by two guys, who shared the money equally and did it for fun and wouldn't do it again for a big clock.
Alternate history
Terry Pratchett's works include several references to alternate histories of Discworld. "Men At Arms" observes that in millions of universes, Edward d'Eath became an obsessive recluse rather than the instigator of the plot that he is in the novel. In "Jingo", Vimes accidentally picks up a pocket organizer that should have gone down another leg of the Trousers of Time, and so can hear the organizer reporting on the deaths that would have occurred had his decision gone otherwise. Indeed, Discworld contains an equivalent of the Time Patrol in its History Monks. "Night Watch" revolves around a repair of history after a time traveller's murder of an important figure in Vimes's past. "Thief of Time" presents them functioning as a full-scale Time Patrol, ensuring that history occurs at all.