This morning, I saw a little pictorial on the cover of the Sunday lifestyle pull-out, saying "Remembering Terry Pratchett - Star2 tomorrow".
Shocked, I immediately whipped out my cellphone, Googled, and I found out he died three days ago. And there wasn't even a blurb in the papers saying he'd passed on.
[As I'm writing this, I've a sense of deja vu. I didn't see Robert Jordan's death coming, either.]
I haven't been a Pratchett fan for long. My first book was Interesting Times, probably back in 2008/09, and I've never laughed so hard nor did I ever think I'd find a book written by a Westerner that was so spot-on in satirising East Asian culture. Mort, The Last Continent, Thud! (which put Sam Vimes right up there with Rincewind as characters I look for), Going Postal, and many more soon followed.
[Interesting Times wasn't my first introduction to Rincewind and the Discworld, though. It was a little computer game named Discworld, released sometime in the '90s. I didn't get around to playing it until I was in college. And after that I found out that it was actually Samuel Vimes who was the protagonist in the book the game was based on.]
One of the main reasons why I loved Pratchett's books is because of his turn of phrase and narrative style: it's very conversational, and I love that he plays on the sentences he writes for added humour. A sentence of his (can't recall it exactly, but it's from Unseen Academicals) which is my personal favourite is about a very well-loved teddy bear who had a third button sewn onto its head, and is thus more enlightened than the average teddy bear.
Another thing about Pratchett's books is that he can write very poignant scenes (the last paragraphs of Mort come to mind), and he writes characters that you start to care about in only a matter of pages, and then you hope that he doesn't kill them off.
I remember reading Monstrous Regiment, and though no one died, the last few chapters made me cry; reading the part in Thud! where Sam Vimes is possessed by the Summoning Darkness and, in fighting said Darkness, he bellows out Where's My Cow? and miles away, young Sam hears him and is placated; and when Ronald Saveloy died in Interesting Times and got into Viking Heaven, I teared up.
[Every time.]
Finding out (some years ago) that Pratchett had Alzheimer's shocked me; the irony of it being that he's still writing, his books are still as witty as ever, and here he had this illness that preys on the mind; an illness of which most people think you'd only get if you don't keep your brain active.
As I was catching up on Pratchett's death via phone, I clicked one with the title, "Terry Pratchett posts final conversations with Death on Twitter" (no link because there are many with the same title and I can't remember which one it was I'd clicked).
And as I read through it and his tweets, I cried. At the car workshop, because I was getting my tyres checked. I totally almost-bawled, and had to hide my eyes with my sunglasses.
In ending this post and with a very heavy heart, I embed the below bittersweet and meta tweets, right from Pratchett's Twitter account (the first one is from Death, who TALKS LIKE THIS).
AT LAST, SIR TERRY, WE MUST WALK TOGETHER.
— Terry Pratchett (@terryandrob) March 12, 2015
Terry took Death’s arm and followed him through the doors and on to the black desert under the endless night.
— Terry Pratchett (@terryandrob) March 12, 2015
The End.
— Terry Pratchett (@terryandrob) March 12, 2015
Rest in peace, Sir Terry Pratchett. Au revoir.
P.S. There's a online petition to Death asking him to bring Terry Pratchett back. I've signed it.
P.P.S. I've found this, which made me emotional again. If you've got a server or something, do go to here.
To quote perscitia from Reddit: I thought I had run out of tears but I guess I was wrong. Read More......
