The embuggerance has taken one of our brightest.
This morning, Penguin Random House announced that Terry Pratchett passed away in his home, surrounded by his family, on March 12th, 2015.
For over 30 years and spanning over 70 books, Terry Pratchett satirized the world through his beloved “Discworld” novels. With humor and cutting wit, Pratchett managed to take huge complex mysteries of the universe and grind them down into everyday epiphanies for his readers. From religion and government regulations to racism, sexism, classism, jingoism, and every other -ism, no topic was off-limits for Sir Terry”s uniquely illuminating writing style.
Pratchett had been battling Alzheimer”s disease – the aforementioned ’embuggerance” – since his diagnosis in 2007. Never shy about his ailment, Pratchett became a champion for allowing terminally ill people to choose the time of their death.
“It should be possible for someone stricken with a serious and ultimately fatal illness to choose to die peacefully with medical help, rather than suffer,” he said after backlash to his BBC documentary Choosing To Die.
Throughout his struggle, Pratchett never gave up writing. Undeterred, he continued to publish novels. When the embuggerance took his ability to read, Sir Terry simply moved on to dictation software and kept going. He completed his final book, a new “Discworld” novel, in the summer of 2014.
Terry Pratchett”s family has asked for privacy at this time. A Just Giving page donating to the Research Institute to the Care of Older People (RICE) has been set up in Sir Terry”s name.