Terry Pratchett
Sir Terence David John Pratchett OBE (28 April 1948 – 12 March 2015) was an English author, humorist, and satirist, best known for the Discworld series of 41 comic fantasy novels published between 1983–2015, and for the apocalyptic comedy novel Good Omens (1990), which he co-wrote with Neil Gaiman.
"Pterry" redirects here. For the fictional pterodactyl, see Jigsaw (British TV series).
Terry Pratchett
Terence David John Pratchett
28 April 1948
Beaconsfield, Buckinghamshire, England
12 March 2015 (aged 66)
Broad Chalke, Wiltshire, England
Novelist
- Comic fantasy
- satire
- science fiction
- Knight Bachelor
2009 - Order of the British Empire – Officer
1998
Pratchett's first novel, The Carpet People, was published in 1971. The first Discworld novel, The Colour of Magic, was published in 1983, after which Pratchett wrote an average of two books a year. The final Discworld novel, The Shepherd's Crown, was published in August 2015, five months after his death.
With more than 100 million books sold worldwide in 43 languages, Pratchett was the UK's best-selling author of the 1990s. He was appointed an Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in 1998 and was knighted for services to literature in the 2009 New Year Honours. In 2001 he won the annual Carnegie Medal for The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents, the first Discworld book marketed for children. He received the World Fantasy Award for Life Achievement in 2010.
In December 2007 Pratchett announced that he had been diagnosed with early-onset Alzheimer's disease. He later made a substantial public donation to the Alzheimer's Research Trust (now Alzheimer's Research UK, ARUK), filmed three television programmes chronicling his experiences with the condition for the BBC, and became a patron of ARUK. Pratchett died on 12 March 2015, at the age of 66.
Early life and education[edit]
Pratchett was born on 28 April 1948 in Beaconsfield in Buckinghamshire, England, the only child of David (1921–2006), a mechanic, and Eileen Pratchett (1922–2010), a secretary, of Hay-on-Wye.[1][2] His maternal grandparents came from Ireland.[3] Pratchett attended Holtspur School, where he was bullied for his speech impediments.[4] He was bothered by the head teacher, who, he said, thought "he could tell how successful you were going to be in later life by how well you could read or write at the age of six".[4]
Pratchett's family moved to Bridgwater, Somerset, briefly in 1957.[1] He passed his eleven plus exam in 1958, earning a place at High Wycombe Technical High School,[a][6] where he was a key member of the debating society[7][8] and wrote stories for the school magazine.[7][9] Pratchett described himself as a "non-descript" student and,[10] in his Who's Who entry, credited his education to the Beaconsfield Public Library.[1][11]
Pratchett's early interests included astronomy.[5] He collected Brooke Bond tea cards about space, owned a telescope and wanted to be an astronomer, but lacked the necessary mathematical skills.[5] He developed an interest in science fiction and attended science fiction conventions from about 1963–1964, but stopped a few years later when he got his first job as a trainee journalist at the local paper.[12] His early reading included the works of H. G. Wells, Arthur Conan Doyle, and "every book you really ought to read", which he later regarded as "getting an education".[13]
Pratchett published his first short story, "Business Rivals", in the High Wycombe Technical School's magazine in 1962. It is the tale of a man named Crucible who finds the Devil in his flat in a cloud of sulphurous smoke.[14] "The Hades Business" was published in the school magazine when he was 13, and published commercially when he was 15.[15]
Pratchett earned five O-levels and started A-level courses in Art, English and History.[16] His initial career choice was journalism and he left school at 17, in 1965, to start an apprenticeship with Arthur Church, the editor of the Bucks Free Press. In this position he wrote, among other things, more than 80 stories for the Children's Circle section under the name Uncle Jim. Two of the stories contain characters found in his novel The Carpet People (1971).[17] While on day release from his apprenticeship, Pratchett finished his A-Level in English and took the National Council for the Training of Journalists proficiency course.[7][18]
Career[edit]
In 1968 Pratchett interviewed Peter Bander van Duren, co-director of a small publishing company, Colin Smythe Ltd. Pratchett mentioned that he had written a manuscript, The Carpet People.[19][20] Colin Smythe Ltd published the book in 1971, with illustrations by Pratchett.[21] It received strong, although few, reviews and was followed by the science fiction novels The Dark Side of the Sun (1976) and Strata (1981).[22] In the 1970s and 1980s, Pratchett published stories in a regional newspaper under the pseudonym Patrick Kearns.[23]
After various positions in journalism, in 1979 Pratchett became Press Officer for the South West Region of the Central Electricity Generating Board (CEGB) in an area that covered three nuclear power stations.[b] He later joked that he had demonstrated "impeccable timing" by making this career change so soon after the Three Mile Island nuclear accident in Pennsylvania, US, and said he would "write a book about his experiences if he thought anyone would actually believe them".[25][26]
The first Discworld novel, The Colour of Magic, was published in hardback by Colin Smythe Ltd in 1983. Pratchett gave up working for the CEGB to make his living through writing in 1987, after finishing the fourth Discworld novel, Mort. His sales increased quickly and many of his books occupied top places on bestseller lists; he was the UK's bestselling author of the 1990s.[27] According to The Times, Pratchett was the top-selling and highest earning UK author in 1996.[18] Some of his books have been published by Doubleday, another Transworld imprint.[28] In the United States, where his books are published by HarperCollins, Pratchett had poorer sales, marketing and distribution until 2005, when Thud! reached the New York Times bestseller list.[29]
According to the Bookseller's Pocket Yearbook (2005), in 2003 Pratchett's UK sales amounted to 3.4% of the fiction market by hardback sales and 3.8% by value, putting him in second place behind J. K. Rowling (6% and 5.6%, respectively), while in the paperback sales list Pratchett came 5th with 1.2% and 1.3% by value (behind James Patterson (1.9% and 1.7%), Alexander McCall Smith, John Grisham, and J. R. R. Tolkien).[30] He has UK sales of more than 2.5 million copies a year.[31] His 2011 Discworld novel Snuff became the third-fastest-selling hardback adult-readership novel since records began in the UK, selling 55,000 copies in the first three days.[32] As of 2023, Pratchett's works have sold more than 100 million copies in 43 languages.[33]
Works[edit]
Discworld[edit]
Pratchett began writing the Discworld series in order to "have fun with some of the cliches"[12] The Discworld is a large disc resting on the backs of four giant elephants, all supported by the giant turtle Great A'Tuin as it swims its way through space. The books are essentially in chronological order,[160] and advancements can be seen in the development of the Discworld civilisations, such as the creation of paper money in Ankh-Morpork.[159]
Works about Pratchett[edit]
A collection of essays about Pratchett's writings is compiled in the book Terry Pratchett: Guilty of Literature, edited by Andrew M. Butler, Edward James and Farah Mendlesohn, published by Science Fiction Foundation in 2000. A second, expanded edition was published by Old Earth Books in 2004. Andrew M. Butler wrote the Pocket Essentials Guide to Terry Pratchett published in 2001. Writers Uncovered: Terry Pratchett is a biography for young readers by Vic Parker, published by Heinemann Library in 2006.
A BBC docudrama based on Pratchett's life, Terry Pratchett: Back In Black, was broadcast in February 2017, starring Paul Kaye as Pratchett. Neil Gaiman was involved with the project which used Pratchett's own words. Pratchett's assistant, Rob Wilkins, said that Pratchett was working on this documentary before he died. According to the BBC, finishing it would "show the author was still having the last laugh".[192]
The English author, critic and performer Marc Burrows wrote an unofficial biography, The Magic of Terry Pratchett, published by Pen & Sword on 6 July 2020.[193] Though it was not endorsed by the Pratchett estate, prior to its publication they did wish Burrows "all the best" regarding the book through the official Pratchett Twitter account.[194] It received generally favourable reviews and won the 2021 Locus Award for Non-Fiction.[195]
In 2022 Wilkins wrote the official biography, Terry Pratchett: A Life with Footnotes.[196] The biography was well-received.[c] In The Daily Telegraph, Tristram Fane Saunders wrote that it "spins magic from mundanity in precisely the way Pratchett himself did".[197] However, in a review for the Irish Independent, Kevin Power called it more a collection of fan notes than a serious biography.[200]
In April 2023 "Entering Discworld Population", an episode of the podcast Imaginary Worlds, was released to mark the 75th anniversary of Pratchett's birth.[201] It discussed four of Pratchett's recurring fiction characters as representative of his underlying philosophy.