Terry Pratchett has died. It sometimes feels arbitrary to pick out one particular person's passing to memorialize, but I know a lot of AGSers are fans of his.
I discovered Discworld as a teenager, looking for something in the vein of Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. It delivered that, and more! (Incidentally, like the famous HHGTTG text adventure, Pratchett's universe was adapted into a series of classic adventure games, and Discworld Noir directly influenced the Blackwell series, among others.) It was one of the first online communities I experienced: I read the alt.fan.pratchett newsgroup before I was even online, downloading new posts off a library or friend's computer to read at home. At university I had the opportunity to meet him at a signing - my friends and I ended up being the last people allowed in line, and we didn't reach the front until an hour after the event was supposed to end. He was tired and a little grumpy, as you might imagine, so we only briefly expressed our appreciation.
Terry Pratchett was a smart guy who cared about big issues, and that intelligence and those concerns increasingly made their way into his books. Beyond that, there's a fundamental decency expressed throughout his work, often in the form of righteous anger. However, for as much as fans often like to dwell on the "depth" of the Discworld novels, above anything else they are, at their best, an unbeatable combination of well-developed fantasy and very funny writing. For many years, going into the bookstore to find a new Discworld novel was a certain treat. (He also wrote a few other books, among which I would highlight Nation as well as Good Omens, co-authored with Neil Gaiman.) I was sad to see the quality start to (IMO) flag in recent years, particularly as it seemed hard not to link it with his 2007 Alzheimer diagnosis.
Pratchett argued for the right to assisted suicide in the face of a condition such as his, but although his struggles are now over, this is still a sad day. RIP Terry.
"In the Ramtops village where they dance the real Morris dance, for example, they believe that no-one is finally dead until the ripples they cause in the world die away - until the clock he wound up winds down, until the wine she made has finished its ferment, until the crop they planted is harvested. The span of someone's life, they say, is only the core of their actual existence." (posted on afp)
I discovered Discworld as a teenager, looking for something in the vein of Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. It delivered that, and more! (Incidentally, like the famous HHGTTG text adventure, Pratchett's universe was adapted into a series of classic adventure games, and Discworld Noir directly influenced the Blackwell series, among others.) It was one of the first online communities I experienced: I read the alt.fan.pratchett newsgroup before I was even online, downloading new posts off a library or friend's computer to read at home. At university I had the opportunity to meet him at a signing - my friends and I ended up being the last people allowed in line, and we didn't reach the front until an hour after the event was supposed to end. He was tired and a little grumpy, as you might imagine, so we only briefly expressed our appreciation.
Terry Pratchett was a smart guy who cared about big issues, and that intelligence and those concerns increasingly made their way into his books. Beyond that, there's a fundamental decency expressed throughout his work, often in the form of righteous anger. However, for as much as fans often like to dwell on the "depth" of the Discworld novels, above anything else they are, at their best, an unbeatable combination of well-developed fantasy and very funny writing. For many years, going into the bookstore to find a new Discworld novel was a certain treat. (He also wrote a few other books, among which I would highlight Nation as well as Good Omens, co-authored with Neil Gaiman.) I was sad to see the quality start to (IMO) flag in recent years, particularly as it seemed hard not to link it with his 2007 Alzheimer diagnosis.
Pratchett argued for the right to assisted suicide in the face of a condition such as his, but although his struggles are now over, this is still a sad day. RIP Terry.
"In the Ramtops village where they dance the real Morris dance, for example, they believe that no-one is finally dead until the ripples they cause in the world die away - until the clock he wound up winds down, until the wine she made has finished its ferment, until the crop they planted is harvested. The span of someone's life, they say, is only the core of their actual existence." (posted on afp)
