Sir Terry Pratchett, author of some mind-boggling number of books, mostly the comic-fantasy Discworld series, died yesterday. He had been diagnosed with a kind of early-onset Alzheimer’s back in 2007, a particularly cruel fate for a writer, but faced it with an impressive degree of grace, and kept writing almost to the end. And, indeed, somewhat past it.
His work was a great comfort to me in some past bad times– see this book review from 2001— so his passing hits harder than for a lot of other authors. Not quite sure what to read to get past that…
(Actually, that’s not entirely true; I still haven’t read the most recent Discworld, not for any particularly good reason. I should probably pick that up, but then again, maybe not…)
Anyway, he was one of the greats, and would be worth remembering just for the funny books. But he also provided me with things like the concept of lies-to-children, the explanation of the importance of the Hogfather, and Granny Weatherwax’s definition of sin, all of which have been tremendously influential on the way I look at the world. And as hundreds of other people are saying the same thing all over my social media feeds, I think that counts as a pretty damn fine legacy.
The world is lessened. I too shall sit in his memory.