In Memorium, Good Knight

Good lord, has it been a year already?

No, wait, over a year. Crap, I let the day go by without remarking on it. I blame being busy, but really, there's no excuse.

So. One year ago, one of my favorite authors died. I'm talking of course, about Sir Terry Pratchett.

Oh, he'd been having troubles for years. A brilliant mind, struggling with early-onset alzheimer's. Hellish, that. Nothing I'd wish on anyone.

I'd just finished writing DIRE:BORN when I heard the news. It... for some absurd reason I was feeling guilty.

I'd had this fantasy, you know? That I would write something good enough that my favorite authors would read it and feel the same way about me that I feel about them. That I'd someday get to shake their hand as a peer, instead of a fan. And I'd JUST finished writing, when off he went. One dream, gone forever. Couldn't help but feel I'd caused it in a roundabout way, through some warped curse or sympathetic resonance. Or just tempting the universe to squelch my dream, as it has so many before.

It hurts more with Terry because I grew up with his work. I found and devoured "The Colour of Magic" in a used bookstore back when I was ten, and shortly thereafter, the library started stocking his Discworld books. And then he'd go and put out another one each year, give or take... Good reads, all of them. Not all perfect, mind, but a mediocre Pratchett book was equal to an awesome book from anyone else.

And beyond the amusement value, there was more to them. Eventually I learned to see the fire beneath the words. He wasn't just writing funny fantasy. He was writing wry observations on the human condition, philosophy, social change, and more. At the core of it, he was writing a reminder that we all are better than we know, that we can be better than we are if we just keep trying to do good things.

Watching him fall to the disease had been heartbreaking to me, and I was just a fan. I can't even imagine what it was for his family and close friends... but I could tell by his writing, that it was bad. Very bad. As time went on and the disease got worse, his books got painful to read. Oh, they still had the fire, but the words layered over them didn't have the same snap. They weren't as sharp. And it wasn't consistent, every now and then he'd get a surge of his old skill back, and I'd get a burst of hope. But it never lasted.

And it occured to me, as I read, that what I was seeing when I read each of these more recent books, was a raw, rough draft. These were his books without the months of careful refining and editing that he put into each. These were him, regardless of how rough they were. These were HIM, and he was struggling to get them out there before he passed on.

Give me a minute. Tearing up here.

Thank you. I shouldn't be tearing up. I am. To the very end, he fought to get the words past the disease that stole his very mind from him. To the very end, he found the words worth saying, and gave them to us, regardless of what it cost him.

Say this, for Terry, and say it with humility for the incredible blazing star of an author that we were fortunate to witness in our lifetimes... Say not that he went down fighting. Say that he went down writing. And we are better people for it.

Rest well, good knight.

It's on us, all of us who loved your work and learned from it to carry the torch from here, and if we do a tenth as well as you did, I'll count it a victory.