Sir Terry Pratchett Goes Home

A tribute to the brilliance of the British satirist, humorist, scientist, philosopher, and, luckily for us, author

Terry Pratchett was a genius.

It is turtles all the way down. (photo by author)

His presence made the world a happier place and his death from early-onset Alzheimer’s disease was a tremendous loss. In his 41 Discworld novels, he wrung every possible emotion from us, from joy and laughter to anger and indignation.

Sir Terrence David John Pratchett lived from 1948 to 2015. He was the greatest English-language satirist of his lifetime, but he was also a true Renaissance man. The Discworld books contained art, music, theatre, warfare, science, and silliness.

I don’t know of another author who could write a beloved fantasy trilogy about a man who becomes, in turn, the Postmaster General, the chairman of the Royal Mint, and the head of a railway company. Or numerous books about fiction’s most cynical street cop, both before and after he becomes enormously rich.

He satirized nationalism, religion, higher education, ancient civilizations, sports, and, quite often, his own fantasy genre. He even wrote books about Discworld’s culture, science, history, and philosophy that, while pretending to teach those subjects in a fictional context…