Terry Pratchett

Sir Terry Pratchett was born on 28 April 1948 in England and died on 12 March 2015. He is best remembered as the creator of the Discworld series, a sprawling sequence of 41 comic fantasy novels that ran from 1983 to 2015, and as the co-author, with Neil Gaiman, of the apocalyptic comedy *Good Omens* (1990). His first novel, *The Carpet People*, appeared in 1971, but it was *The Colour of Magic* (1983) that launched his signature world, after which he produced roughly two books a year. With over 100 million copies sold in 43 languages, he was the UK's bestselling author of the 1990s. Pratchett was appointed an OBE in 1998 and knighted for services to literature in 2009. He won the Carnegie Medal in 2001 for *The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents*, the first Discworld novel aimed at younger readers, and received the World Fantasy Award for Life Achievement in 2010. In comics, he is credited as writer on 17 issues, most notably adaptations such as *Terry Pratchett's The Colour of Magic*, *The Light Fantastic*, *Mort*, and *Small Gods*, as well as a crossover with *The Old Guard*. After revealing his early-onset Alzheimer's diagnosis in 2007, he became a prominent advocate for research, donating substantially and filming BBC documentaries about his condition. His final Discworld novel, *The Shepherd's Crown*, was published posthumously in 2015.