Terry Pratchett 1948-2015
Sir Terence David John Pratchett has passed away after a lengthy battle with Alzheimer’s. The BBC has a decent obituary.
To say that Terry Pratchett’s novels were my favorite reads, and re-reads, would be an understatement.
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I’ve still never gotten into his books. the obituary mentions that he did the illustrations too for his first book – I’m going to see if I can fins a copy of that edition.
I was sad when I saw this story upon waking this morning. I figured you would have something about his death. The only question is whether he fulfilled his desire to “die sitting in a chair in my own garden with a glass of brandy in my hand and Thomas Tallis on the iPod”. I’d like to imagine so.
His family announced his death with the following tweets on Twitter (read in reverse order, as written):
Terry Pratchett @terryandrob · 9h 9 hours ago
The End.
Terry Pratchett @terryandrob · 9h 9 hours ago
Terry took Death’s arm and followed him through the doors and on to the black desert under the endless night.
Terry Pratchett @terryandrob · 9h 9 hours ago
AT LAST, SIR TERRY, WE MUST WALK TOGETHER.
Hipparchia, The Carpet People was re-issued recently with his original illustrations.
I got an alert from the BBC on the iPad about his death after I saw the tweets on the Fairbanks News-Miner [of all places]. I will be talking about it in more detail when I get a block of time to really do it justice, because he was a social critic and educator whose used satiric fantasy to expose problems in the real world. He also liked cats.
“He was a man, take him for all in all, I shall not look upon his like again.” I know I should be quoting Sir Terry himself, but somehow The Bard summed it up for me.
I am about halfway through Pratchett’s works (Lords and Ladies is on my current reading shelf), and I was, and I would continue to be, in no hurry to finish his opere tutte, but for one thing: Sir Terry was just my age. That gives me pause to think…
I first heard of Pratchett decades ago in connection with the L5 Society, and I believe I’ll choose to remember him in that context. And of course for his sense of humor! And his wretched puns… Even as Alzheimer’s set upon him in a back alley in Ankh-Morpork and stole some of his capacity to deal with complexity in a story, he never lacked creativity; that was present, packed full and running over, right through his last published works.
I do not envy Death his duty here. Just think: so many of his best lines were given to him by Sir Terry…
OK, I’ll cite one example of Sir Terry’s puns. As he describes the riots in the sack of Ankh-Morpork, he sums up the ravishing of the music stores by rioters in a single word…
“Luters.”
OK, OK; one more: when one of the last heroes (Cohen the Barbarian?) is listening to a young lady explaining a dental appliance that could compensate for his almost complete lack of teeth, she tells him the term for the product:
“Dent-chewers.”
Go ahead, groan; I know I did!
My all time favorite pun was ‘felonious monk’ in Soul Music – that was unbelievable, up there with the Parker quip “I’d rather have a bottle in front of me, than a frontal lobotomy.”
After the pollen calms down I will do a longer post about Pratchett.
Every time I see someone whine about “auditing the Fed”, I want to send them a copy of Pratchett’s book “Making Money” to understand just how stupid they sound talking about auditing an entity that can print their own money. It’s more economics education than you’ll get from a dozen lecturing tenured University of Chicago economics professors. And it’s *funny*! Which is why it’s so seditious, heh!
That was Terry’s genius — writing bloody hilarious books that actually had something to say. He will be missed.
That book is one of the most straight forward explanations of fiat currency that exists. Trying to explain to people that gold, diamonds, and other hard assets are only ‘worth’ what someone else is willing to exchange for them is a thankless task. A lot of people discovered that the ‘appraised’ value of their house can drop like a rock overnight.
Yeah, I keep telling gold bugs “you can’t eat gold,” and urge them to stockpile beans and bullets instead if they’re insistent upon stockpiling something in the event that civilization collapses. It rarely seems to take, though, they seem to ascribe magical qualities to the substance and no amount of facts will change their mind.
I assume it is still the same, but when I was in Alaska most stores would accept gold in payment, but since it was a commodity, the value changed. You could always get a bottle of beer for a buck, but the cost in gold wasn’t fixed and there was a penalty to cover the cost of changing it to dollars. In addition, if you had nuggets instead of dust, people didn’t want to deal with it, and would point you towards the gold office to convert it to dollars. The best form of gold are the coins from government mints, a bank will only give you the stated face value, not the value of the gold.
:'( Too sad.
I have every book he ever wrote, and those published by others (such as the Ankh Morpork illustrations, & Nanny Ogg’s Cookbook) and the movies and animations. I just watched Going Postal again on Sat. One of my all time favorite movies. 🙂
He leaves behind a wonderful legacy! His wit and humor helped me through many a troubled time. I especially find his humor most useful in discovering the many people who have none and no understanding of irony and satire. It saves me wasting time on the unworthy. 😉 😀
Ah well… And another great light has gone out. *sigh*
There won’t be any more, but he has provided a book a week forever if you re-read them, as I do.
They are some of the best text books for life, both social and political, but you can ignore the lessons and just enjoy the fun to be found. The lessons will sneak up on you. The footnotes are some of the best parts of many of the books.