What Terry Pratchett Taught Me

For years, one of the great pleasures around Christmas time was that a new Terry Pratchett book would show up in the bookstore. I'd first encountered his work in the 90's, set in a quasi-fantasy world called Discworld, which was flat and circular and rested atop four giant elephants which in turn sat on the back of the Great Turtle A'tuin. The stories were about witches and wizards, trolls and dwarves and gnomes (and Nac Mac Feegles, forget them at your peril). but what they were really about was people.

I guess you could call Sir Terry Pratchett a "Fantasy Author", or perhaps a "Satire Writer", but what Pratchett really wrote were lovingly crafted explorations of the art of being human. He created an entire genre just within his footnotes. On the rush towards giving computers awareness, he wrote in Hogfather (I send-up of the Dickens Christmas tales):

"Real stupidity beats artificial intelligence every time."

In his book Monstrous Regiment, a wonderful inversion of the classic "Dirty Dozen" style of war drama, he writes about belief:

"The presence of those seeking the truth is infinitely to be preferred to the presence of those who think they’ve found it."

On the whole question about the Meaning of Life:

The whole of life is just like watching a film. Only it’s as though you always get in ten minutes after the big picture has started, and no-one will tell you the plot, so you have to work it out all yourself from the clues.

Over the last decade he wrote a series of young adult books about a young witch by the name of Tiffany Aching, the granddaughter of an old-shephardess who watched over the Chalk (which bore a great deal of resemblance to the area around Dover) that were so profound, gems of wonder, that they even changed the world outlook of this (much older) writer. These books, most of Pratchett's books, were funny and terrifying and fast-paced and full of drama, but one thing they shared was that they made you think - about people, about life (and Death), about the the nature of being ... well, human.

Susan Sot Helit. Sam Vimes. Esme Weatherwax and Granny Ogg, Captain Carrot and Angua and William De Word and Knobby Nobbs and Havelock Vetinari and Lu Tze ... these were characters and many more LIVED; they jumped from the pages and lived their magical wonderful lives and we as readers tagged along, A writer looking to understand characterization could take a graduate course just on the Discworld books, even before getting into the collaborations that Pratchett had with others such as Neil Gaiman and Stephen Baxter.

Pratchett was insightful about the nature of people in business:

If you ignore the rules, people will, half the time, quietly rewrite them so that they don't apply to you. - Equal Rites.

Havelock Vetinari, perhaps the ultimate Machiavellian manager, had a number of insights as well, such as:

"I believe you find life such a problem because you think there the Good People and the Bad People," said Vetinari, "You are wrong, of course. There are, always and only, the Bad People, but some of them are on opposite sides."

On being true to yourself (from Sourcery):

"It's vital to remember who you really are. It's very important. It isn't a good idea to rely on other people or things to do it for you, you see. They always get it wrong."

On priorities -

Personal is not the same thing as important. People just think it is. (Granny Weatherwax, Lords and Ladies)

Terry Pratchett died today. He was sixty six. He was diagnosed with Alzheimers Disease eight years ago, and for his many fans it was hard watching this wonderful, luminous mind slowly dimming as the disease took its toll. Yet far from fading away, Sir Terry (he was knighted by Queen Elizabeth in 2009) fought hard, raising awareness of the disease with a high profile documentary, contributing significantly to Alzheimer research and writing extensively about the disease and how he was confronting it.

Terry Pratchett knew death ... in many ways DEATH was one of his most enduring characters, and the one who had the most perspective on life. Perhaps the one I hang on to most is this quote from Reaper Man.

“No one is actually dead until the ripples they cause in the world die away...”

Goodbye, Terry Pratchett. May you find your potato.