RIP, Sir Terry Pratchett

(Written 12/3/2015, the day Sir Terry Pratchett died.)

How can the death of someone I knew was dying affect me so much? I never met the man, and all I knew of him was his writing, writing that often divided people. Us Pratchett fans often feel that people who don't like Sir Terry's work somehow don't "get it". Or that the literati automatically dismiss popular authors, because the masses rarely choose great literature over entertaining rubbish. Of course,  they forget that Dickens was an enormously popular author in his own lifetime, as was Hardy... as was Shakespeare.

I suppose I'm affected because Pratchett wrote stories that grabbed the reader, turned their world upside down and shook it until something funny, something that made you think or some great illustration of the human condition fell out. He created characters that strode out of the pages, characters like Sam Vimes, originally Sergeant of the City Watch, a man who lived on bacon sandwiches, Old Bearhugger's Whisky and his wits. Sam Vimes is the main character in all the detective/police novels, and in my mind he's always been the late John Thaw.

Or there's Granny Weatherwax, a witch who rarely uses witchcraft because other means - mainly "headology" - are usually easier. Doesn't stop her scaring the daylights out of the villagers in The Ramtops where she lives ("Bein' respected", Granny would correct me.) Then there's her two other coven members, Granny Ogg (Miriam Margolyes), who likes a drop of Scumble ("It's made of apples. Well, mainly apples.") and has one tooth, a blackened pipe, a murderous cat called Greebo ("He's just an old softie") and is likely to bankrupt you if play Cripple Mr Onion (a card game) with her; and Magrat, a vaguely New Age witch who has many cures that involve herbs, and with whom you would only have to be for a few minutes before the words "wet hen" rose unbidden in your mind.

The coven (the maiden, the mother and the crone) feature in all the "Witches" books, which often concern the plight of elderly women in an agricultural society. Or there's the Arch-Chancellor of the Unseen University where all the magic happens, where they have a proto-computer that runs on ants (and has a sticker on it proclaiming "Anthill Inside"). The Arch-Chancellor is a huntin', shootin', fishin' man (forever Robert Hardy in my mind) who got to the top of the academic tree by killing everyone above him - as has every Arch-Chancellor before him. He is constantly wary of traps, unexpected potions, poison in his favourite Wow-Wow Sauce and the insertion of a portal to the Dungeon Dimensions in his bathroom.

And then, of course, there's Death. Death doesn't kill you, something or someone else has to do that, but Death is always around to pick up the pieces, offer what reassurance he can, and point you to somewhere that is never defined. Death is emotionless, but at the back of those piercing blue eyes there's a kindness... and a fascination with what it is to be human, something that Death doesn't understand at all. He tries, though.

The thing is, that (with the exception of Death, I hope) we all know those characters in the Roundworld. We've all met them in one form or another. As many of you know, I have also been lucky enough to meet the Librarian of Unseen University, an orang-utan. And once you've had a two-way encounter with an orang-utan, you're soft on them for the rest of your life. As was Sir Terry, who raised a lot of money for the Urang-utan Preservation Trust, and made two documentaries about those gentle apes.

The greater thing, though, is that police officers are certain that Pratchett must have worked in that profession, such is his command of the procedure, the daftness and the in-jokes that coppers share. Academics have praised his deep understanding of the university system. Morris sides are convinced that only a Morris dancer could understand their arcane ways and parody them so finely. Witches are mainly silent, but psychologists have written warmly about his use of headology to mimic rural "magic". The man was a master of facts, a prolific reader of both fiction and non-fiction, and brought all his experience from every aspect of life to a fine point that incised his prose.

Sir Terry Pratchett wrote terrific novels, books with plots, parodies, many fine jokes, quite a lot of slapstick jokes, puns that would make you want to slap him, and moments that would pull the reader up short with tears in their eyes. You might be reading for several pages before you realised what was being parodied, but when the magic moment came, you felt as if you were sharing a secret smile with an old friend.

Like the playwright with a touring company who attracted inspiration like a rod attracts lightning, and who was having trouble with a new play. He'd just torn up the line "Is this a duck, it's beak toward my hand?". Or the child of Satan, born to be the AntiChrist, but mixed up at birth and handed to completely wrong parents, a middle-class couple with middle-class values - and if anything will drive the Devil out, it's a diet of "Antiques Roadshow" and regular bowel movements. On his eleventh birthday, he is to be gifted a Hellhound, but when it arrives with red eyes and slavering jaws he treats it like any eleven year old boy does, so it shortly becomes a family pet - called "Dog". Not long after, it becomes clear that we're reading a parody of the "William" books, albeit with The Apocalypse looming, complete with the four bikers of the Apocalypse, and a couple of angels (one from each side, but over the aeons they've become friends who both want to avoid the end of the world because they don't want to lose their jobs.)

My favourite of his books is "Reaper Man", where Death is about to be replaced (because he has developed a personality) and has to get a job on the Discworld. Thanks to his skill with a scythe, he becomes a reaper on a small farm and ends up fighting a mechanical reaper. Along the way, he assists the farm owner, Miss Flitworth, to her death and a reconciliation with her much-loved husband, lost in an icy grave.

("When did you do it?" YOU REMEMBER WHEN YOU SAID "OH, YOU'LL BE THE
DEATH OF ME?" "Yes?" WELL, I WAS.)

"Night Watch" is probably his finest work, being a parody of Les Miserables with added time-travel and the very best way to lift a seige. By pushing it out of town, obviously. Please don't go and read those two books if you want to know how good Pratchett is, it would be like starting to read JRR Tolkien with The Silmarillion followed by The Two Towers.

Sir Terry's last book was "A Slip Of The Keyboard", and I urge you to read it. It's a collection of his non-fiction articles, covering themes such as writing ("Most people who say they would like to write actually want to have written"), orang-utans, the joy of reading, early-onset Alzheimers and assisted suicide. It is a magesterial example of how to write prose with style, with precision and with a voice.

As far as the fiction is concerned, start at the beginning and enjoy reading an author learning to find his voice, then using it to tell tales that will make you gasp with wonder, snigger a lot, entrance you, make you shed the odd tear and guffaw out loud on trains.

Pratchett was accused of literature from time to time. Now that he's gone, it's an accusation that will be levelled a hell of a lot in the future. Swift, Wodehouse, and other giants of humour - welcome another to your band. Others are welcome to disagree (I'll expect to see your working, mind), but we've just lost the greatest writer of our generation.

Sir Terry Pratchett, a knight who made his own sword from iron ore he dug, smelted, hammered, folded, hammered again and ground to an edge, Carnegie Medal winner and author of 70+ books is dead. Not by his own hand, finally (although I hope he got that glass of brandy and the Thomas Tallis he planned for his chosen send-off), but from natural causes, with his family around him and his cat asleep on his death bed.

Told you there's a kindness behind those piercing blue eyes...