Fantasy comic novelist loved by his readers

Terry Pratchett, who has died aged 66, was one of the most popular British authors of all time. In the modern age, only the career of JK Rowling, creator of Harry Potter, is comparable.

The facts of Pratchett’s success are impressive: the sheer number of books he has sold (some 80 million copies worldwide), and the number of reprints, translations, dramatisations on television and stage, audio versions and spin-offs, plus awards and honorary doctorates galore.

Then there is the huge number of Discworld spinoffs: chess pieces, wizardly hats, cloaks and T-shirts, leather bags, pottery figurines, fantastic artwork, magic clobber of every kind including dribbly candles - all made by and sold to fans. His signings at bookshops were legendary: a queue stretching down the street was de rigueur, and although Pratchett worked quickly at the signatures, he was unfailingly friendly to everyone who turned up. He was open to readers: he answered emails (or some of them, because the volume of incoming messages was spectacular) and he went to Discworld conventions (almost all of them). He was a nice man, unpretentious and with a wry manner.

Omnivorous

Terence David John Pratchett was born in Beaconsfield, Buckinghamshire, son of David and Eileen. He described himself as an omnivorous reader of books from the local library, making up for his lacklustre years at High Wycombe technical high school.

He wrote his first story while still at school and it became his first professional sale when it was picked up later by the magazine Science Fantasy. He went into local journalism, working on the Bucks Free Press, and later on the Western Daily Press and Bath Chronicle. While working as a journalist, he wrote innumerable short stories for the newspapers under pen names.

Not long after the nuclear meltdown at Three Mile Island in the US in 1979, he worked as a publicity officer for the Central Electricity Generating Board, and was paid to issue public information about the safety of three nuclear power stations. He left the CEGB to become a full-time writer in 1987, when offered a deal for the next three Discworld books.

Such a multi-book contract for an almost unknown writer indicated that something special was going on. Pratchett's first fantasy book, The Carpet People, written when he was 18, was originally published in 1971 by a local Buckinghamshire publisher, Colin Smythe Ltd, but as Pratchett's popularity grew it became clear that a larger publisher would be better equipped to promote his books. Smythe stepped aside as publisher and became Pratchett's agent instead. Thereafter, hardbacks appeared from large publishers, beginning with Gollancz.

Discworld

Most of Pratchett’s books are set on Discworld, a flat, circular planet where the seas perpetually pour over the sides. Curious sailors who noticed that other ships seemed to disappear over the horizon and went out to explore discovered that they truly did disappear.

The disc is supported, as if in Hindu mythology, by four large elephants, and they are resting on the back of a frost-covered turtle (gender unknown, although naughty people have tried to find out by building a gantry over the edge and climbing down for a quick peek), which swims sedately through space.

At first, Discworld was used as a background for a series of comic sendups of other fantasy cliches but, as Pratchett himself said, if that was all, he would have run out of steam after a couple of books.

Discworld constantly evolved, and part of its fascination for readers was the way in which the background became deeper, more complex and in some cases darker, but nonetheless remained a background. Forty Discworld novels appeared.

The emphasis was always on the comedy, the foibles and peccadilloes of the characters, a gentle cynicism about the ways of the world, a joy in puns, a love of irritating footnotes, a relish for the bathetic puncturing of the bombastic – and above all an irrepressible and infectious silliness.

Pratchett’s novels, although in written in a racy, readable style, were constantly witty, with many cultural, vernacular and literary references.

Cultural references

You never quite knew where the next association was coming from: you would find sideways references to HP Lovecraft, William Shakespeare, Beachcomber, Sellar and Yeatman, Thomas Hughes, Peter Shaffer (a good joke about Salieri), JRR Tolkien, Egyptology, vampirism, dragons.

At the end of 2007, following what he thought was a mild stroke, Pratchett was diagnosed with posterior cortical atrophy, a form of Alzheimer’s. The onset was early (he was still in his 50s) but also slow. Higher intellectual capacity was not immediately affected. He was able to go on writing, but typing at a keyboard became a problem.

He soon learned that there was no cure, nor any realistic hope of one within his expected lifetime. Pratchett immediately donated $1m (€0.95) to Alzheimer’s Research UK.

His last years were astonishingly active. He continued to write fiction, learning to dictate rather than type, and a last Discworld novel was completed and delivered last summer.

Three novels in collaboration with Stephen Baxter were also completed in this period, as well as collections of essays and short stories.

In 2010 he wrote and introduced the BBC Richard Dimbleby lecture, which was an impassioned plea for the right to assisted suicide.

He was appointed OBE in 1998, and knighted in 2009. He is survived by his widow, Lyn Purves, and their daughter, Rhianna, a professional writer.