This date in 1948 saw the birth of the writer Terry Pratchett. Here are ten facts about him:
He was born in Beaconsfield in Buckinghamshire. His parents were called David and Eileen. He was an only child, and often wrote characters who had no siblings, either. "In fiction, only-children are the interesting ones," he said.
He wrote his first published story at the age of 13, as a school assignment. It was called Business Rivals and was about the Devil hiring an ad agency to help lure tourists to Hell. His teacher was very impressed and had it published in the school magazine. A year later, Pratchett did some more work on it and submitted it to Science Fantasy magazine under the title The Hades Business. The editor commented that it was better written than 75% of the stories submitted and accepted it. Pratchett was paid £14 for the story and used the money to buy a Typewriter.
He left school at 17. As an A level student, he had his eye on what he might do after and wrote to a local paper asking if there might be a job for him when he finished school. The editor replied that he wanted a trainee reporter right away so Pratchett dropped out of school to take the job.
One of his tasks was to write a column consisting of a serialised children’s story. This column would become his first novel, Tales of the Carpet People, published in 1971. The book launch was held in the carpet department of a London furniture shop.
As a child, he wanted to be an astronomer. He collected Brooke Bond tea cards about space and owned a Telescope, but wasn’t good enough at maths to follow that path. Nevertheless, it was always one of his interests and as an adult, he built an observatory in his garden.
Most of the time his novels didn’t have chapters, because “life does not happen in regular chapters, nor do movies, and Homer did not write in chapters.” Only a couple of his childrens’ books were divided into chapters.
Things named after him include an Asteroid (127005 Pratchett) and a fossil sea-turtle from the Eocene epoch of New Zealand (Psephophorus terrypratchetti). His books almost inspired the name of a chemical element. In 2016, Pratchett fans petitioned the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry to name chemical element 117 octarine with the proposed symbol Oc (pronounced "ook"). However, the society went with tennessine, symbol Ts.
When he was knighted in 2009 for services to literature, he made himself a ceremonial sword for the ceremony. He and a friend dug up 178 pounds of Iron ore from a deposit near the author’s home in Wiltshire, added some fragments of a Meteorite, smelted it in a homemade kiln, and hammered the metal into bars. Pratchett commissioned a local blacksmith to fashion the material into a blade and decorate it with silverwork. He would later adopt a coat of arms which included a morpork Owl and the motto Noli Timere Messorem (Don't fear the reaper).
He owned a greenhouse full of carnivorous plants. He described them as "not as interesting as people think".
In 2007, he was diagnosed with a severe form of Alzheimer’s, posterior cortical atrophy. He referred to the diagnosis as "the great embuggerance." He carried on writing for as long as he could, and stated he wanted to die by assisted suicide, or assisted death as he preferred to call it before he became completely helpless. However, when he died at the age of 66 from complications of the disease, it was a natural death. His computer hard drive contained as many as 10 unfinished novels at the time of his death, but it was Pratchett’s wish that these be destroyed, and they were. His hard drive was smashed by a steam roller, and run through a stone crusher just to make sure. The tweet announcing his death read: “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.”
The six richest people in Britain decide to hold a contest to settle the question of which of them is most successful. It will be a gladiator style contest with each entrant fielding a team of ten super-powered combatants. Entrepreneur Llew Powell sets out to put together his team, which includes his former lover, an employee of his company with a fascinating hobby, two refugees from another dimension (a lonely giant and a drunken sailor), two sisters bound together by a promise, a diminutive doctor, a former Tibetan monk initiate and two androids with a history. As the team train together, alliances form, friendships and more develop, while others find the past is not easy to leave behind.
Meanwhile, a ruthless race of aliens has its eyes on the Earth. Already abducting and enslaving humans, they work towards the final invasion which would destroy life on Earth as we know it. Powell’s group, Combat Team Alpha, stumble upon one of the wormholes the aliens use to travel to Earth and witness for themselves the horrors in store if the aliens aren’t stopped. Barely escaping with their lives, they realise there are more important things to worry about than a fighting competition.
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