OBE is an English author of fantasy novels, especially comical works. He is best known

for the Discworld series of about 40 volumes. Pratchett's first novel, The Carpet People,

was published in 1971, and since his first Discworld novel was published in 1983, he

has written two books a year on average. His Discworld book, Snuff, was at the time of

its release the third-fastest-selling hardback adult-audience novel since records began in

the United Kingdom, selling 55,000 copies in the first three days.

Pratchett was the UK's best-selling author of the 1990s, and has sold over 85 million

books worldwide in 37 languages. He is currently the second most-read writer in the UK, and

seventh most-read non-US author in the US. Pratchett 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 2001 he won the annual Carnegie Medal for The Amazing Maurice

and his Educated Rodents, the first Discworld book marketed for children. He received the

World Fantasy Award for Life Achievement in 2010.

In December 2007, Pratchett announced that he was suffering from early-onset Alzheimer's

disease. Subsequently he made a substantial public donation to the Alzheimer's Research

Trust, and filmed a programme chronicling his experiences with the disease for the BBC.

Background Early life

Pratchett was born in 1948 in Beaconsfield in Buckinghamshire, England, the only child

of David and Eileen Pratchett, of Hay-on-Wye. His family moved to Bridgwater, Somerset briefly

in 1957, following which he passed his eleven plus exam in 1959, earning him a place in

John Hampden Grammar School. Pratchett described himself as a "non-descript student" and, in

his Who's Who entry, credits his education to the Beaconsfield Public Library.

His early interests included astronomy; he collected Brooke Bond tea cards about space,

owned a telescope and wanted to be an astronomer, but lacked the necessary mathematical skills.

However, this led to an interest in reading British and American science fiction. In turn,

this led to attending science fiction conventions from about 1963/4, which stopped when he got

his first job a few years later. His early reading included the works of H. G. Wells

and Arthur Conan Doyle and "every book you really ought to read" which he now regards

as "getting an education". At age 13, Pratchett published his first short

story "The Hades Business" in the school magazine. It was published commercially when he was

15. Pratchett earned 5 O-levels and started A-level

courses in Art, English and History. Pratchett's first career choice was journalism and he

left school at 17 in 1965 to start working for the Bucks Free Press where he wrote, amongst

other things, several stories for the Children's Circle section under the name Uncle Jim. One

of these episodic stories contains named characters from The Carpet People. These stories are

currently part of a project by the Bucks Free Press to make them available online. While

on day release he finished his A-Level in English and took a proficiency course for

journalists. Early career

Pratchett had his first breakthrough in 1968, when working as a journalist. He came to interview

Peter Bander van Duren, co-director of a small publishing company. During the meeting, Pratchett

mentioned he had written a manuscript, The Carpet People. Bander van Duren and his business

partner, Colin Smythe (of Colin Smythe Ltd Publishers) published the book in 1971, with

illustrations by Pratchett himself. The book received strong, if few reviews. The book

was followed by the science fiction novels The Dark Side of the Sun, published in 1976,

and Strata, published in 1981. After various positions in journalism, in

1980 Pratchett became Press Officer for the Central Electricity Generating Board in an

area which covered three nuclear power stations. He later joked that he had demonstrated "impeccable

timing" by making this career change so soon after the Three Mile Island nuclear accident

in Pennsylvania, U.S., and said he would "write a book about my experiences, if I thought

anyone would believe it". The first Discworld novel The Colour of Magic

was published in 1983 by Colin Smythe in hardback. The publishing rights for paperback were soon

taken by Corgi, an imprint of Transworld, the current publisher. Pratchett received

further popularity after the BBC's Woman's Hour broadcast The Colour of Magic as a serial

in six parts, after it was published by Corgi in 1985 and later Equal Rites. Subsequently,

rights for hardback were taken by the publishing house Victor Gollancz, which remained Pratchett's

publisher until 1997, and Smythe became Pratchett's agent. Pratchett was the first fantasy author

published by Gollancz. Pratchett gave up working for the CEGB in

1987 after finishing the fourth Discworld novel, Mort, to focus fully on and make his

living through writing. His sales increased quickly and many of his books occupied top

places on the best-seller list. According to The Times, Pratchett was the top-selling

and highest earning UK author in 1996. Some of his books have been published by Doubleday,

another Transworld imprint. In the US, Pratchett is published by HarperCollins.

According to the Bookseller's Pocket Yearbook from 2005, in 2003 Pratchett's UK sales amounted

to 3.4% of the fiction market by hardback sales and 3.8% by value, putting him in second

place behind J. K. Rowling (6% and 5.6% respectively), while in the paperback sales list Pratchett

came 5th with 1.2% by sales and 1.3% by value (behind James Patterson (1.9% and 1.7%), Alexander

McCall Smith, John Grisham and J. R. R. Tolkien). His sales in the UK alone are more than 2.5 million

copies a year. Current life

Terry Pratchett married his wife Lyn in 1968, and they moved to Rowberrow, Somerset, in

1970. Their daughter Rhianna Pratchett, who is also a writer, was born there in 1976.

In 1993 the family moved to Broad Chalke, a village west of Salisbury, Wiltshire, where

they currently live. He lists his recreations as "writing, walking, computers, life". He

describes himself as a humanist and is a Distinguished Supporter of the British Humanist Association

and an Honorary Associate of the National Secular Society. He is the patron of the Friends

of High Wycombe Library. Pratchett is well known for his penchant for

wearing large, black fedora hats, as seen on the inside back covers of most of his books.

His style has been described as "more that of urban cowboy than city gent."

Concern for the future of civilisation has prompted him to install five kilowatts of

photovoltaic cells (for solar energy) at his house. In addition, his interest in astronomy

since childhood has led him to build an observatory in his garden. An asteroid (127005 Pratchett)

is named after him. On 31 December 2008 it was announced that

Pratchett was to be knighted (as a Knight Bachelor) in the Queen's 2009 New Year Honours.

He formally received the accolade at Buckingham Palace on 18 February 2009. Afterwards he

said, "You can't ask a fantasy writer not to want a knighthood. You know, for two pins

I'd get myself a horse and a sword." In late 2009, he did make himself a sword, with the

help of his friends. He told a Times Higher Education interviewer that "'At the end of

last year I made my own sword. I dug out the iron ore from a field about 10 miles away

- I was helped by interested friends. We lugged 80 kilos of iron ore, used clay from the garden

and straw to make a kiln, and lit the kiln with wildfire by making it with a bow.' Colin

Smythe, his long-term friend and agent, donated some pieces of meteoric iron - 'thunderbolt

iron has a special place in magic and we put that in the smelt, and I remember when we

sawed the iron apart it looked like silver. Everything about it I touched, handled and

so forth... And everything was as it should have been, it seemed to me.'"

Alzheimer's disease In August 2007 Pratchett was misdiagnosed

as having had a minor stroke in 2004 or 2005 that was believed to have damaged the right

side of his brain. While his motor skills had been affected, the observed damage had

not impaired his ability to write. On 11 December 2007, Pratchett posted online that he had

been newly diagnosed with a very rare form of early-onset Alzheimer's disease, which

he said "lay behind this year's phantom 'stroke'." He has a rare form of the disease called posterior

cortical atrophy, in which areas at the back of the brain begin to shrink and shrivel.

Describing it as an 'embuggerance' in a radio interview, Pratchett appealed to people to

"keep things cheerful", and proclaimed that "we are taking it fairly philosophically down

here and possibly with a mild optimism." Leading the way, Pratchett stated that he feels he

has time for "at least a few more books yet", and added that while he understands the impulse

to ask 'is there anything I can do?', in this particular case he will only entertain such

offers from "very high-end experts in brain chemistry." Discussing his diagnosis at the

Bath Literature Festival in early 2008, Pratchett revealed that he now found it too difficult

to write dedications when signing books. In March 2008, Pratchett announced he was

donating US$1,000,000 (about £494,000 at the time) to the Alzheimer's Research Trust,

saying that he had spoken to at least three brain tumour survivors yet he had spoken to

no survivors of Alzheimer's disease, and that he was shocked "to find out that funding for

Alzheimer's research is just 3% of that to find cancer cures." Of his donation Pratchett

said: "I am, along with many others, scrabbling to stay ahead long enough to be there when

the Cure comes along." In April 2008, the BBC began working with

Pratchett to make a two-part documentary series based on his illness. The first part of Terry

Pratchett: Living With Alzheimer's was broadcast on BBC Two on 4 February 2009, drawing 2.6m

viewers and a 10.4% audience share. The second, broadcast on 11 February 2009, drew 1.72m

viewers and a 6.8% audience share. The programme won a BAFTA award in the Factual Series category.

He also made an appearance on The One Show on 15 May 2008, talking about his condition.

He was the subject and interviewee of the 20 May 2008 edition of On the Ropes (Radio

4), discussing Alzheimer's and how it had affected his life.

On 8 June 2008, news reports indicated that Pratchett had an experience, which he described

as: "It is just possible that once you have got past all the gods that we have created

with big beards and many human traits, just beyond all that, on the other side of physics,

there just may be the ordered structure from which everything flows" and "I don't actually

believe in anyone who could have put that in my head". He went into further detail on

Front Row, in which he was asked if this was a shift in his beliefs: "A shift in me in

the sense I heard my father talk to me when I was in the garden one day. But I'm absolutely

certain that what I heard was my memories of my father. An engram, or something in my

head...This is not about God, but somewhere around there is where gods come from."

On 26 November 2008, Pratchett met the Prime Minister Gordon Brown and asked for an increase

in dementia research funding. Since August 2008 Pratchett has been testing

a prototype device to address his condition. Despite some improvements in his condition,

the ability of the device to alter the course of the illness has been met with scepticism.

In an article published mid-2009, Pratchett stated that he wishes to commit 'assisted

suicide' (although he dislikes that term) before his disease progresses to a critical

point. Pratchett was selected to give the 2010 BBC Richard Dimbleby Lecture, entitled

Shaking Hands With Death, which was broadcast on 1 February 2010. Pratchett introduced his

lecture on the topic of assisted death, but the main text was read by his friend Tony

Robinson because of difficulties Pratchett has with reading – a result of his condition.

Because of his condition, Pratchett currently writes either by dictating to his assistant,

Rob Wilkins, or by using speech recognition software.

In June 2011 Pratchett presented a one-off BBC television documentary entitled Terry

Pratchett: Choosing to Die on the subject of assisted death. It won the Best Documentary

award at the Scottish BAFTAs in November 2011. He has also stated several times that, when

he dies, he wishes to hear Thomas Tallis's Spem in alium played in the background.

In September 2012 Pratchett stated in an interview "“I have to tell you that I thought I’d

be a lot worse than this by now, and so did my specialist." In the interview it was stated

that the cognitive part of his mind was "untouched", and his symptoms relating to the condition

were physical (which is normal for PCA) and that putting a book together was actually

better and easier now that it was done by dictation.

Interests Computers and the Internet

Pratchett started to use computers for writing as soon as they were available to him. His

first computer was a Sinclair ZX81, the first computer he used properly for writing was

an Amstrad CPC 464, later replaced by a PC. Pratchett was one of the first authors routinely

to use the Internet to communicate with fans, and has been a contributor to the Usenet newsgroup

alt.fan.pratchett since 1992. However, he does not consider the Internet a hobby, just

another "thing to use". He now has many computers in his house. When he travels, he always takes

a portable computer with him to write. His experiments with computer upgrades are reflected

in Hex. Pratchett is also an avid video game player,

and collaborated in the creation of a number of game adaptations of his books. He favours

games that are "intelligent and have some depth", citing Half-Life 2 and fan missions

from Thief as examples. Natural history

Pratchett has a fascination with natural history that he has referred to many times. Pratchett

owns a greenhouse full of carnivorous plants. In 1995, a fossil sea-turtle from the Eocene

epoch of New Zealand was named in honour of him Psephophorus terrypratchetti by the palaeontologist

Richard Köhler. Orangutans

Pratchett is a trustee for the Orangutan Foundation UK but is pessimistic about the animal's future.

Following Pratchett's lead, fan events such as the Discworld Conventions have adopted

the Orangutan Foundation as their nominated charity, which has been acknowledged by the

foundation. One of Pratchett's most popular fictional characters, the Librarian of the

Unseen University's Library, is a wizard who was transformed into an orangutan in a magical

accident and decides to remain in that condition as it is so convenient for his work.

Amateur astronomy Pratchett has an observatory in his back garden

and is a keen astronomer. He has appeared on the BBC programme The Sky at Night.

Writing career Awards

Pratchett received a knighthood for "services to literature" in the 2009 UK New Year Honours

list. He was previously appointed Officer of the Order of the British Empire, also for

"services to literature", in 1998. Following this, Pratchett commented in the Ansible SF/fan

newsletter, "I suspect the 'services to literature' consisted of refraining from trying to write