Sir Terry Pratchett Leaves Us Far Too Early At Age 66

Terry Pratchett has left us. This is copyright by Suvudu.

Sir Terry Pratchett Leaves Us Far Too Early At Age 66
Mar 12th, 2015 @ 01:17 pm › Shawn Speakman

It is with the heaviest of hearts that I write these words.

Sir Terry Pratchett, author of the amazingly brilliant and hilarious Discworld novels, has passed away at the age of 66 years old.

It is a dark day for those who read his work, darker still for those who knew him. Because Sir Terry Pratchett was one of the most brilliant authors to write in the history of our genre. He began his foray into Discworld in 1983 when he published The Colour of Magic, a short novel that would go on to build a magnificently large and rich world comprised of about forty volumes. And it is in those novels where Sir Terry Pratchett will now wait for us whenever we need him.

Rhianna Pratchett, his daughter, and his UK publisher Penguin Random House have confirmed the sad news with a statement from Larry Finlay, MD at Transworld Publishers:
I was deeply saddened to learn that Sir Terry Pratchett has died. The world has lost one of its brightest, sharpest minds.
In over 70 books, Terry enriched the planet like few before him. As all who read him know, Discworld was his vehicle to satirize this world: he did so brilliantly, with great skill, enormous humour and constant invention.
Terry faced his Alzheimer’s disease (an ’embuggerance’, as he called it) publicly and bravely. Over the last few years, it was his writing that sustained him. His legacy will endure for decades to come.
My sympathies go out to Terry’s wife Lyn, their daughter Rhianna, to his close friend Rob Wilkins, and to all closest to him.”
Terry passed away in his home, with his cat sleeping on his bed surrounded by his family on 12th March 2015. Diagnosed with Posterior Cortical Atrophy in 2007, he battled the progressive disease with his trademark determination and creativity, and continued to write. He completed his last book, a new Discworld novel, in the summer of 2014, before succumbing to the final stages of the disease.
We ask that the family are left undisturbed at this distressing time.
A Just Giving page donating to the Research Institute to the Care of Older People (RICE) has been set up in his memory: https://www.justgiving.com/Terry-Pratchett

It is not easy talking about death, harder still to talk about our impending own. But Sir Terry Pratchett did so with the same wry sense of humor and tenacity that he wrote with, bringing awareness to the disease that took him from us and us from him. He created innumerable and wonderful characters during the time he sat at his computer, but it is his character that we celebrate now—his courage, his strength, and his ready laugh.

My thoughts and care go out to his family, who were with him at his passing. And in the end, he had three last simple messages to share on Twitter, the capitalized words below how the author portrayed the character of Death in his novels:
AT LAST, SIR TERRY, WE MUST WALK TOGETHER
Terry took Death’s arm and followed him through the doors and on to the black desert under the endless night.
The End

I’ve never hated reading “The End” so much as I do right now.

Thank you, Sir Terry Pratchett.


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