Sir Terry Pratchett passes away

[Ace]

I remember when I was 14, a friend told me all about Small Gods, and challenged me to find the reason Vorbis gets mad. I read it, loved it, and when he explained it, I loved it even more.

Since then I've been a huge Discworld fan. I've read through most of the series, and Death is by far my favourite. Vimes is great too. So is Mort. And Rincewind. And Vetinari. And DeWorde. And the witches. And Cut-Me-Own-Throat. And Susan. And.....this list could go on a long while.

The simple truth is, the man built an entire world, and he put in so much detail that you could picture yourself there. His stories were always fantastic. I can never remember reading a bad Pratchett story. Ever.

I'm going to miss him. But I'm glad he is finally not in pain any more, and I am ever so thankful that he managed to write so many Discworld Novels before he passed.

And also, that twitter update undid me. I'm going to go and curl under a blanket and start a Discworld Marathon

[Nick Adams]

I came late to Discworld. I didn't start reading it until I was in university. I was perusing (read: painstakingly looking through) a friend's book collection, and I happened upon a section devoted solely to Sir Terry Pratchett. The conversation basically went as follows:

"Who is Terry Pratchett? You seem to have a rather large number of her books."

"His."

"What?"

"Terry Pratchett is a man. And he's a really good and really funny fantasy writer."

"Okay. Can I borrow one of these?"

"Sure."

"Thanks. Which one should I start with?"

"Well, The Color of Magic is the first one in the series, but I'm re-reading it right now, so..."

She handed me Guards! Guards! And I was hooked. When a bit of dialogue goes, "...and Bob's your uncle." "Surely Bjorn Strongintharms is my uncle.", you have won me as a reader. Something about mocking strange idioms warms the cockles of my heart (irony intended). Still, as I am a little late to the party in relation to how long Discworld has been a thing, my favorite characters are Esmerelda Weatherwax, Tiffany Aching, and Moist von Lipwig, with Vetinari and Vimes rounding out a top five.

Truth be told, the final Discworld novel was a fitting close to the whole shebang. Mister Pratchett will be missed, but at least his work was completed before he left us.

Ook ook ook. Ook ook.

[fourstarfizzle]

A sad sad day, being at +8 GMT I got the news just as I was browsing twitter before going to bed. I was for a good few hours after contemplating the loss. I've the vast majority of Discworld books at my parents house in the UK, I've even got the original Discworld PC Box game somewhere. I remember my primary school was filled with Roald Dahl and then Terry Pratchet took the helm for most of my adolescent life. His wit and humour helped shape mine. As the great man said, 'He said that there was death and taxes, and taxes was worse, because at least death didn't happen to you every year.'

And also, my favourite line of all time:

'Give a man a fire and he's warm for a day, but set fire to him and he's warm for the rest of his life.'

[Skummy]

Nick; there's another Tiffany Aching novel due out in September.

I'm not sure if this is still the case, but Terry Pratchett said for years that he never wanted to write the "last" Discworld novel, and at one point had made plans to hand the series over to his daughter Rhianna after he died.

[lanky316]

To my understanding Rhianna has had a part in preparing the next step of things she's taken on a showrunner type position as writer on "The Watch" and a film adaptation of The Wee Free Men so wouldn't surprise me if she were to take on an element of writing further novels for the series.

[Nick Adams]

Another Tiffany Aching novel? Pre-order ahoy!