Shaking Hands With Death: The landmark essay on life and death from the bestselling Discworld author

by Terry Pratchett

Contrary to popular belief, fantasy is not about making things up. The world is stuffed full of things. It is almost impossible to invent any more. No, the role of fantasy as defined by G. K. Chesterton is to take what is normal and everyday and usual and unregarded, and turn it around and show it to the audience from a different direction, so that they look at it once again with new eyes.

As Death says in one of my own books, most men don’t fear death, they fear those things – the knife, the shipwreck, the illness, the bomb – which precede, by microseconds if you’re lucky, and many years if you’re not, the moment of death.

If I knew that I could die, I would live. My life, my death, my choice.

But there comes a time when technology outpaces sense, when a blip on an oscilloscope is confused with life, and humanity unravels into a state of mere existence.

It’s that much heralded thing, the quality of life, that is important. How you live your life, what you get out of it, what you put into it and what you leave behind after it. We should aim for a good and rich life well lived and, at the end of it, in the comfort of our own home, in the company of those who love us, have a death worth dying for.