Sir Terry Pratchett was born on April 28, 1948. This would have been his 71st birthday.

Sir Terry died March 12, 2015, from complications of Alzheimer’s. Between 1948 and 2015 he wrote a LOT of books and he was knighted in 2009 for his contributions to literature. If you haven’t read his books, you’re missing a treat.

Pratchett wrote 41 books in the Discworld universe. He co-wrote Good Omens with Neil Gaiman, which will be an Amazon Prime TV show later this year.

Dr. Who‘s David Tennant will be starring in Good Omens as the Demon Crowley, (no relation to the character played by Mark Sheppard on Supernatural), with Michael Sheen (the Twilight Saga – Breaking Dawn) as the Angel Aziraphale. Frances McDormand (Moonrise Kingdom, Transformers: the Dark of the Moon ) plays God and Benedict Cumberbatch (Dr. Strange, Sherlock) takes on the role of Satan. Gaiman himself is writing the scripts for the six-episode series. David Mackinnon (Dr. Who, Sherlock, Knightfall) is directing.

Sir Terry combined satire and humor with ethics and philosophy. He expected his readers to think, and frequently gave them food for thought.

Sir Terry wrote both science fiction and fantasy in the early days of his career, but later focused on fantasy. His affinity for fantasy is illuminated partly by one of his interviews, where he said, ” It is easier to bend the universe around the story.”

Though Sir Terry left many unfinished projects. His estate has not yet given any other authors permission to work on them, apart from those begun with Neil Gaiman.

In addition to being appointed an officer of the Order of the British Empire in 1998 and knighted in 2009, he was awarded ten honorary doctorates from various British, Irish, and Australian universities. Dr. Prachett won the NESFA Skylark Award in 2009 and the World Fantasy Award for Life Achievement in 2010. Also in 2010 he won the Andre Norton Award for Young Adult Science Fiction and Fantasy.

Signal this to all towers, not logged.

He’d never have wanted to go home. He was a real linesman. His name is in the code, in the wind in the rigging and the shutters. Haven’t you ever heard the saying “A man’s not dead while his name is still spoken?”

— Sir Terry Prachett’s Disworld novel, “Going Postal”

SCIFI.radio’s web site carries a message in its page headers. The message is this:

<meta http-equiv=”X-Clacks-Overhead” content=”GNU Terry Pratchett” />

Every time you visit SCIFI.radio, his name is sent out over the clacks, travelling invisibly from destination to destination. His name is in the code.

Sir Terry Pratchett passed away on this day in 2015 from complications of Alzheimer’s Disease, which Sir Terry named “The Embuggerance”.

Sir Terry was the author of more than 40 books in the Discworld series. Much beloved by the fans, he created an entire universe that we could live in and play in when life gets too crazy not to just give in and enjoy the crazy for a while.

So long as we remember Sir Terry Pratchett, Death can’t have him.

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