Terry Pratchett: Discworld creator who sold more than 85 million books
1948-2015
SIR Terry Pratchett, who has died aged 66, was Britain’s bestselling novelist of the ’90s. His immaculately written, wildly imaginative brand of comic fantasy enabled him to connect with readers not usually attracted to the science fiction and fantasy genres.
Most of his more than 70 books were set on the Discworld (a flat Earth supported by elephants on the back of a giant turtle), a creation that proved enduring and flexible enough to allow Pratchett the scope to change direction and evolve as a writer without losing touch with his core audience.
His appeal was solidly based on well-crafted prose, imaginative situations, economically phrased humour and well-observed characters. With his knack for choice similes — Death, a recurring character, speaks with “a voice like the slamming of coffins’ lids” — his style appealed equally to old and young; and his use of a fully realised alternative world made it possible for him to tackle a range of contemporary topics and issues without forfeiting his lightness of touch.
He sold more than 85 million books.
An only child, Terence David John Pratchett was born on April 28 1948 at the village of Penn in Buckinghamshire.
While his father encouraged him in those practical endeavours that appeal to schoolboys — “He was never so pleased as when I electrocuted him by setting up a little device in his shed” — he attributed his love of books to his grandmother, who introduced him to HG Wells, Richmal Crompton and Arthur Conan Doyle.
Pratchett went to a technical high school because “woodwork would be more fun than Latin”. He was, by his own admission, a “nondescript” student; the most significant event in his school career was probably the publication of his short story The Hades Business in the school magazine when he was 13 (two years later he sold it commercially, and used the proceeds to buy his first typewriter).
An early interest in science — astronomy in particular — was frustrated by a lack of aptitude for maths, but it made him an avid reader of science fiction, which he bought from a local shop specialising in pornography; fantasy and science fiction was only sold under the counter. He left school before taking his A-levels to become a journalist on the local paper.
His first book, The Carpet People, was published in 1971, and was a critical rather than a commercial success. Between 1976 and 1981 he published two science fiction novels, The Dark Side of the Sun and Strata , which some critics place among his best work. Strata contains the first version of Discworld, although in a radically different form, and the style is already polished and mature.
In 1983, Pratchett joined the Central Electricity Generating Board as a press officer, and published his first Discworld novel, The Colour of Magic. At this time, Pratchett was active in the British science fiction community, regularly attending conventions. An accomplished public speaker, his style was relaxed but highly professional, delivering throwaway lines in an infectiously cheerful manner.
The success of the first three Discworld novels led Pratchett to resign to concentrate on writing, shortly before the publication of his fourth novel, Mort, widely regarded as his best. It tells the story of a young man apprenticed to Death, who falls in love with his employer’s (adopted) daughter. The titular hero exists largely in a state of bewilderment at this unexpected turn in his affairs. “He was determined to discover the underlying logic behind the universe,” Pratchett wrote, “which was going to be hard, because there wasn’t one.”
At this point, Pratchett was publishing two books a year and working hard at promoting them, appearing at book signings, conventions and library talks. He was able to maintain this prodigious output because for him writing was a pleasure, more than merely a way of earning a living. Writing “is the most fun you can have with your clothes on”, he said.
One of the fans’ favourite recurring characters in the Discworld novels is the Librarian, a wizard permanently transformed into an orang-utan by a workplace accident at the magical Unseen University. The char-
COMIC FANTASY: Terry Pratchett in 2012 acter’s popularity led Pratchett to develop an interest in orangutans and later to campaign for their protection.
In 1998, he was appointed OBE for services to literature. “I suspect the services to literature consisted of refraining to try and write any,” he said. The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents won him the 2001 Carnegie medal for best children’s novel.
Around 2000, Pratchett’s work began to display a change of direction. The rate of production dropped from two books a year to one, and his work became darker, more thoughtful and more complex.
In 2007, he was diagnosed with a rare form of Alzheimer’s disease, which led him to make a million-dollar donation to the Alzheimer’s Research Trust, which in turn inspired his fans to launch the “Match it for Pratchett” internet fundraising campaign.
He also became a champion of the right to die (he disliked the term “assisted suicide”), tackling the subject in an hour-long BBC documentary Choosing to Die (2011). The award-winning film generated some controversy over the decision to film the dying moments of its subject, 71-year-old Peter Smedley, after he had swallowed a lethal dose of barbiturates at the Swiss euthanasia clinic Dignitas.
Pratchett insisted that investigating Dignitas’s work had only reinforced his convictions, and he accused the British government of “turning its back” on the issue, forcing terminally ill citizens to seek help abroad. The sanctity of life should not, he said, come at the expense of dignity. “I know the time will come when words will fail me. Then, I don’t want to go on living,” he said.
But the BBC reported that Pratchett, who was knighted in 2009, eventually died without any “assistance”.
Pratchett married, in 1968, Lyn Purves, with whom he had a daughter, Rhianna. — © The Daily Telegraph, London
I know the time will come when words will fail me. Then, I don’t want to go on living