User:FreeBard42/sandbox

Sir Terence David John Pratchett  OBE (28 April 1948 – 12 March 2015) was an English humourist, satirist, and author, best known for the Discworld series of 41 comic fantasy novels published between 1983–2015, and for the apocalyptic comedy novel Good Omens (1990), which he co-wrote with Neil Gaiman. His books have sold 100 million copies worldwide in 43 languages, and he was the UK’s best-selling author of the 1990s. During this period he became a household figure due to his prolific output, often self-deprecating humour in interviews, and his all-black public wardrobe topped with a black Borsalino fedora. He is widely regarded as one of the greatest fantasy authors of all time, and one of the greatest English authors of the modern era.

Born in Beaconsfield, Pratchett published his first story at age 15, and left school two years later to start an apprenticeship in journalism. He remained in local journalism for the next 20 years, during which time he wrote a number of children’s stories under the pen names Uncle Jim and Patrick Kearns. His first novel, The Carpet People, was published in 1971, followed by The Dark Side of the Sun (1976) and Strata (1981). The first Discworld novel, The Colour of Magic, was published in 1983, and by 1987 he was able to start writing full-time, putting out an average of two books a year until health problems in the 2000s forced him to slow his pace.

The Discworld series began as broad pastiche of fantasy and sword and sorcery, and some early critics dismissed it as low-brow. However, as it progressed, Pratchett's writing was noted for combining his trademark wit and wordplay with increasingly complex storytelling, parodies, and worldbuilding in a setting which reflected and often satirized the real world; since the 1990s there has been a growing body of academic work analysing the series and its exploration of topics such as morality, power, social criticism, and the human condition. He is credited with modernizing the fantasy genre by deconstructing and reinterpreting the cliches and stereotypes which were widespread in the genre during the 20th century, and his approach has led to the series being compared to social science fiction, and to Pratchett being described as a science fiction author.

Pratchett's writing has also had an influence beyond fiction; the Sam Vimes “Boots” theory of socioeconomic unfairness, from the Discworld novel Men at Arms (1993), gained prominence in the 2010s as a meme before giving its name to the Vimes Boots Index in 2022, and the first of The Science of Discworld books, which he co-wrote with Ian Stewart and Jack Cohen, popularized the term lie-to-children.

In 2003, the BBC’s Big Read poll of Britain’s favourite novel featured fifteen Pratchett books in the top 200, more than any other author, and five – The Colour of Magic (1983), Mort (1987), Guards! Guards! (1989), Good Omens (1990), and Night Watch (2002) – placed in the top 100, tying him with Charles Dickens for the most. He was appointed Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in 1998 and was knighted for services to literature in the 2009 New Year Honours.

In December 2007, Pratchett announced that he had been diagnosed with early-onset Alzheimer's disease. He subsequently campaigned to both raise awareness of the disease and support changes in legislation around the right to die, receiving criticism for the latter. He became a patron of the Alzheimer's Research Trust – now Alzheimer's Research UK (ARUK) – and filmed three television programme chronicling his experiences with the condition for the BBC. He died on 12 March 2015, aged 66; his final novel, the Discworld novel The Shepherd’s Crown, was published five months later. His daughter, the writer Rhianna Pratchett, was named his literary heir and has stated that no further Discworld books will be authorized.

Terry Prathett Bibliography
The English author Terry Pratchett (1948 - 2015) wrote over 80 books, including the 41 comic fantasy novels set on the Discworld.

Discworld
Main Article: Discworld Bibliography

Children's books

 * Where's My Cow (2005)
 * The World of Poo (2012)

Short stories

 * "Troll Bridge" (1991) (published in After The King: Stories in Honour of J.R.R. Tolkien)
 * "Theatre of Cruelty" (1993) (published in W. H. Smith Bookcase, revised and expanded version published in The Wizards of Odd, 1996)
 * "The Sea and Little Fishes" (1998) (published in Legends)
 * "The Ankh-Morpork National Anthem" (1999) (collected in A Blink of the Screen)
 * "Death and What Comes Next" (2002) (published online)
 * "Medical Notes" (2004) (published in Once More* with Footnotes, later collected in A Blink of the Screen)
 * "A Collegiate Casting-Out of Devilish Devices" (2005) (published in The Times Higher Education Supplement, later collected in A Blink of the Screen)

The Science of Discworld
Written with Jack Cohen and Ian Stewart


 * The Science of Discworld (1999)
 * The Science of Discworld II: The Globe (2002)
 * The Science of Discworld III: Darwin's Watch (2005)
 * The Science of Discworld IV: Judgement Day (2013)

Map Books
Written with Stephen Briggs


 * The Streets of Ankh-Morpork (1993) (Illustrated by Stephen Player)
 * The Discworld Mapp (1995) (Illustrated by Stephen Player)
 * A Tourist Guide to Lancre (1998) (Illustrated by Paul Kidby)
 * Death's Domain (1999) (Illustrated by Paul Kidby)

Other

 * The Discworld Companion (1994) (with Stephen Briggs)
 * The Pratchett Portfolio (1996) (Illustrated by Paul Kidby)
 * Nanny Ogg's Cookbook (1999) (with Stephen Briggs and Tina Hannan)
 * The Art of Discworld (2004) (Illustrated by Paul Kidby)
 * The Discworld Almanak (2004) (with Bernard Pearson)
 * The Wit and Wisdom of Discworld (2007) (Edited by Stephen Briggs)
 * The Folklore of Discworld (2008) (with Jaqueline Simpson)
 * The Ankh-Morpork Archives Vol. 1 (2019) (with Stephen Briggs)
 * The Ankh-Morpork Archives Vol. 2 (2020) (with Stephen Briggs)

Novels and Novellas

 * The Carpet People (1971)
 * The Dark Side of the Sun (1976)
 * Strata (1981)
 * Good Omens (1990) (with Neil Gaiman)
 * Nation (2008)
 * Dodger (2012)
 * The Abominable Snowman (2014) (also collected in Dragons at Crumbling Castle)

The Nome Trilogy
1. Truckers (1988)

2. Diggers (1990) 3. Wings (1990)

Johnny Maxwell
1. Only You Can Save Mankind (1992)

2. Johnny and the Dead (1993) 3. Johnny and the Bomb (1996)

The Long Earth (with Stephen Baxter)
1. The Long Earth (2012)

2. The Long War (2013) 3. The Long Mars (2014)

4. The Long Utopia (2015) 5. The Long Cosmos (2016)

Short story collections

 * Once More* with Footnotes (2004) (edited by Priscilla Olson and Sheila M. Perry)
 * A Blink of the Screen (2012)
 * Dragons at Crumbling Castle (2014)
 * The Witch's Vacuum Cleaner (2016)
 * Father Christmas' Fake Beard (2017)
 * The Time-travelling Caveman (2020)
 * A Stroke of the Pen: The Lost Stories (2023)

Short stories

 * "The Hades Business" (1963)
 * "Twenty Pence with Envelope and Seasonal Greetings" (1987)
 * "Final Reward" (1988)
 * "Sphinx" (1988)
 * "Turntables of the Night" (1989) (published in The Flying Sorcerers, 1997)
 * "# ifdefDEBUG + "world/enough" + "time"" (1990) (published in Digital Dreams)
 * "Hollywood Chickens" (1990) (published in More Tales from the Forbidden Planet)
 * "The Secret Book of the Dead" (Poem, 1994) (published in Now We Are Sick)

Non-fiction and miscellaneous

 * The Leaky Establishment (1984) (2001 Foreword)
 * The Unadulterated Cat (1989)
 * The Ultimate Encyclopedia of Fantasy (1998) (Foreword)
 * "Cult Classic" (2002) (published in Meditations on Middle-earth, later collected in A Slip of the Keyboard)
 * Dodger's Guide to London (2013)
 * A Slip of the Keyboard (2014)
 * Shaking Hands with Death (2015) (Text of Pratchett's 2010 Richard Dimbleby Lecture, also collected in A Slip of the Keyboard)
 * Seriously Funny (2016)