Terry Pratchett

Terry Pratchett (Beaconsfield, 1948 – Broad Chalke, 2015) was a British author of comic fantasy and satire, best known for the Discworld series, a flat and absurd world that works as a distorted mirror of our own. He wrote in English, and his books, translated into dozens of languages, made him one of the best-selling authors in the United Kingdom during the 1990s. His work matters as much for its humour as for the way it used parody to examine religion, power, justice, science and death.

He was born in Beaconsfield, Buckinghamshire, in 1948, the only child of a mechanic and a secretary. He attended the technical school in High Wycombe, where he wrote stories for the school magazine, and in 1965 he left education to start as a journalist at the Bucks Free Press. Over the next years he combined news reporting with short fiction and jobs at other papers in the region, including the Western Daily Press and the Bath Chronicle. In 1979 he became a press officer for an electricity company that ran three nuclear power stations, a job he kept while writing until 1987, when he decided to devote himself entirely to fiction.

His first novel, The Carpet People, appeared in 1971 and received strong though few reviews. The real turning point came with The Colour of Magic in 1983, the first Discworld book. From then on he wrote, on average, two books a year, a pace he kept for decades. His novels combine quick jokes, wordplay and memorable characters, such as Death, the witches and the Watch of Ankh-Morpork, with a sharp view of human institutions. Over time his books took on a darker tone and explored their themes in greater depth. Outside Discworld he wrote Good Omens, an apocalyptic comedy co-written with Neil Gaiman, along with children's novels such as the Gnome trilogy and the standalone Nation. With Ian Stewart and Jack Cohen he also published popular science books linked to his invented world.

His recognition grew steadily. He was appointed an Officer of the Order of the British Empire in 1998 and was knighted in 2009. In 2001 he won the Carnegie Medal for The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents, and in 2010 he received the World Fantasy Award for Life Achievement. In December 2007 he announced that he had early-onset Alzheimer's disease. Rather than withdraw, he faced the illness with humour and became an active supporter of research, making a substantial donation to the Alzheimer's Research Trust and appearing in three BBC programmes about his experience. In his last years he dictated his work, as he could no longer type.

Pratchett died on 12 March 2015 at his home in Broad Chalke, Wiltshire, with his wife, Lyn, and his daughter, the writer Rhianna Pratchett, nearby. His legacy is twofold. There is the Discworld saga, which ended with The Shepherd's Crown, published months after his death and still his most widely read work. And there is a way of writing fantasy that takes humour seriously without giving up reflection, an approach that has influenced many readers and writers since.