The gentle rage of the compassionate man

A short eulogy for pterry.

Terry Pratchett was an author I came to sideways and with totally the wrong idea.  I ad been a Douglas Adams fan since hearing THHGTTG on Radio 4, and then I bought his novelisations.  I loved them.
Some time later I recall seeing pterry books and reading the terrible blurbs on the back which always compared him to Adams.  With a sense of outrage I read them...and fell in love.
I even remember what made me fall. I read a passage near the start of The Light Fantastic in which Rincewind explains that the little doors and windows in the toadstools make them inedible.  In your face, Enid Blyton.
After that...well I bought them all, read them all, loved them all.  The man who shone through that text was someone who had a deep love of humans and an innate sense of justice.  And boy did he know old ladies.  Granny Weatherwax was based on Mrs Berry my primary school teacher AFAICT.
Pterry knew academics.  He knew children.  He knew governesses.  and he knew humanity.
For me the Weatherwax sequence shone as the funniest.  Sam Vimes showed fatherhood at it's best.  But Small Gods showed humanity it's darkness in a mirror.  Didactylos was where pterry showed his knowledge of where the world could lead you, how deep the cynicism is that follows experience.  And Brutha was his answer.
Perry's campaigning for euthanasia was and is dear to my heart.  I pray that soon painless death will be a matter of choice not an impossible dream for those whose suffering is beyond endurance.

I have spread pterry books far and wide, leaving them with family members and friends, then buying new copies.  I secretly quote from them in papers and lectures.  When foal cannot sleep I pt them on Audible for her.

I will miss this man.