The first of the books I received for Christmas to be reviewed is this collection of stories written by Terry Pratchett whilst he was still learning his trade as a writer and working as a journalist for the Bucks Free Prres in Beaconsfield. These stories however were mainly written for the Bristol based Western Daily Press so Pratchett wrote under the pseudonym of Patrick Kearns, Kearns being his mothers maiden name. The stories were rediscovered by Pat and Jan Harkin during a massive trawl through the British Library newspaper archive in search of a story they knew existed ‘The Quest for the Keys’ and in doings o they came across the other works by an unknown writer Patrick Kearns that sounded and felt familiar as they used places and characters from the tales written by Pratchett for the Bucks Free Press under the name of Uncle Jim which have now been collected in four volumes, the fourth coming out after I wrote my original review of those books. Apparently the fourth book is to be the last but ‘A Stroke of the Pen’ adds another twenty short stories by the young Terry Pratchett for us to enjoy and yes they do feel like the Uncle Jim stories and indeed one of them, ‘Mr Brown’s Holiday Accident’ did originally appear in the Bucks Free Press as by Uncle Jim.

The scale of the archive work done by the Harkin’s can only be appreciated when you know that despite being very short each of the stories were published in multiple parts with the longest, and the only one to be credited to Terry Pratchett in the Western Daily Press, being ‘The Quest for the Keys’ which appeared in thirty six individual sections from 30th July to the 13th October 1984. Also nobody knew about Patrick Kearns as a pseudonym so it was only the style and content that tipped them off that here was an until then unknown source of Terry Pratchett works. Also although ‘The Quest for the Keys’ was known to exist, because of the way it was clipped from the newspaper and saved the dates and indeed the newspaper which printed it were lost so they had to go through four possible newspapers archives from the earliest probable date (1972) up until 1984, when Terry’s first Discworld novel, ‘The Colour of Magic’, was printed, in their search. Fortunately they decided to work forwards rather than back or they would have found ‘The Quest of the Keys’ a lot quicker and probably not stumbled on the works of Patrick Kearns.

Enough of the history, what of the stories themselves? Well I love the Uncle Jim stories and these are more of the same, indeed there are a couple of reworked Uncle Jim tales under the name of Patrick Kearns which provides confirmation, if any was needed, that this is indeed the same author. The first story included is clearly inspired by Roy Lewis’s ‘The Evolution Man’ with its stone age man main character discovering major advances such as fire. My personal favourite of the ones in this book however is ‘The Fossil Beach’ in which the curator of Blackbury museum is taken to the beach by a local geology student where they find a fossilised deckchair, radio and a copy of today’s newspaper in the mouth of a small dinosaur. How these all got there is a mystery they are determined to solve. Pratchett is clearly already a very competent fantasy writer by the time he wrote as Patrick Kearns, not as good as he would become but definitely worth reading.

Sadly I cannot recommend this hardback book as it currently exists, as it has been announced that there is a story missing from it which Colin Smythe, who had commissioned the Harkin’s to undertake their quest, accidentally omitted when he sent the text to the printers which means that the paperback, due out in April this year will be the complete book and anyone who has the hardback first edition, like mine, will have to buy the paperback as well in order to read the missing tale.