Anyone who considers themselves a Terry Pratchett fan has known his end was coming ever since he revealed his “embuggerance” in 2007; that didn’t stop the news of his death from being desperately sad. One solace for devotees like me was the multitude of people who came forward and said they loved his Discworld. Even though Pratchett was the bestselling author of the 1990s, it still came as a pleasant surprise that he meant so much to so many.
Pratchett has been on my mind for the past six months. I loved his Discworld series as a teenager, devouring each garish, Josh Kirby-designed paperback twice a year. I had been wondering recently how Pratchett had shaped my adult tastes, how he served as the bridge between my childhood spent reading Roald Dahl and Janet and Allan Alhberg, and the books I love now.
How much of my enthusiasm for the giddy intelligence of Donna Tartt and David Foster Wallace, or Nick Harkaway and Margaret Atwood’s exuberant reimagining of what the fantastic can be, is traceable to my early immersion in Pratchett’s world, which is famously carried on the shoulders of four elephants, stood on the back of a space turtle?
So I did what anyone suffering from a bout of literary nostalgia would do, and impulse-bought Pratchett’s entire Discworld back catalogue, all 40 novels, last autumn on eBay. I have been charting my reread on my blog Pratchett Job, a site named with the best punning tribute to Terry that I could muster. It was launched to justify buying the huge box of books that now sits under my bed. But there was an element of fear to it: what if I went back to something I had truly loved and found it to be lacking?
Since October, I have been reading Pratchett almost exclusively, and I have found out that my younger self had decent taste in books. When I first picked them up in the early 90s, I was attracted by the humour, the inspired puns, the fantastical and apocalyptic nature of the books (four of Pratchett’s first five Discworld novels have a world-ending threat), and the sense that I was reading something a bit adult.
It turns out I missed a lot first time around: the literary allusions, the Macbeth homage that underpins Wyrd Sisters, or his sustained attack across several novels on a ridiculous figure known as Bloody Stupid Johnson (I still don’t know what he had against the author of The Unfortunates). I was unaware, too, of his love of craftsmanship and his pride in “a job well done” – not a surprise for a man who churned out two excellent Discworld books a year until only about 10 years ago.
The development of his writing style is similarly fascinating. His debut, The Colour of Magic, was a collection of vaguely related comic set pieces rather than a novel, but he quickly dropped the farce of early books and discovered the delight of a good plot. This gave us books such as Pyramids, Small Gods, Night Watch and The Fifth Elephant, novels that juggle thoughtful ideas with a compelling structure.
The novels also became creepier in the wake of his collaboration with Neil Gaiman on Good Omens. The threat of the evil multidimensional elves in Lords and Ladies, for example, is delightfully spinechilling. Pratchett was much darker than the cuddly, floppy-hatted gent his image suggested (as Gaiman has pointed out).
His books are fuelled by a deep-seated moral anger about the stupid things humans do: Pratchett was so furious because he was adamant we are all capable of so much more. His Watch novels deployed trolls and trans dwarves to rail against racism and social constraints, but did so by showing how we all have some degree of prejudice. By placing the tyrannical genius Havelock Vetinari, one part Steve Jobs to two parts Lex Luthor, as head of the city of Ankh-Morpork, Pratchett challenged us to embrace a dictator. And we do, because he makes the city work. Vetinari is my favourite Discworld character. I worry what this says about me.
As the Discworld series evolved, its fantastical aspects faded into the background, with technology replacing magic. To Pratchett, there was little difference between the two. If a piece of paper with some ink can change the world and free a wrongly accused murderer (as in the plot of The Truth, his riotous examination of the newspaper industry), how is that any different from a rabbit being pulled from a hat?
Above all, what Pratchett gave us is a 40-book love letter to reading. Stories are what the Discworld were built on, with his characters using them to explain the chaos of the world. While embracing storytelling, he also showed us its limitations. He was critical of characters who don’t live in the real world, but also showed how stories help us get one step closer to understanding.
The warmth of tributes to Pratchett makes me hopeful that he has finally been taken seriously as an author. The recent spat over fantasy tropes in Kazuo Ishiguro’s The Buried Giant shows how snobbery towards this genre still exists. Pratchett used, and had a blast subverting, fantasy tropes, from orphaned future kings (the wonderful Carrot from the Night Watch) to cynical anti-heroes who can’t help doing good (step forward Granny Weatherwax). His Discworld series forces us to think differently, whether about religion, attitudes towards gender roles, the role of law and leaders, or why we tell stories at all.
Rereading Pratchett taught me that there is a lot to gain from going back to your old favourites. His humour, warmth and constant need to challenge the reader mean he is one of the very best authors the UK has produced.
