Terry Pratchett, the British author of the popular "Discworld" series of fantasy novels, has died of a form of Alzheimer's disease at the age of 66, his publishing house said on Thursday.
Terry Pratchett, the British author of the popular "Discworld" series of fantasy novels, has died of a form of Alzheimer's disease at the age of 66, his publishing house said on Thursday.
Larry Finlay, MD at Transworld Publishers has given the following statement,
"I was deeply saddened to learn that Sir Terry Pratchett has died. The world has lost one of its brightest, sharpest minds.
In over 70 books, Terry enriched the planet like few before him. As all who read him know, Discworld was his vehicle to satirise this world: he did so brilliantly, with great skill, enormous humour and constant invention.
Terry faced his Alzheimer's disease (an 'embuggerance', as he called it) publicly and bravely. Over the last few years, it was his writing that sustained him. His legacy will endure for decades to come.
My sympathies go out to Terry's wife Lyn, their daughter Rhianna, to his close friend Rob Wilkins, and to all closest to him."
Terry passed away in his home, with his cat sleeping on his bed surrounded by his family on 12th March 2015. Diagnosed with PCA1 in 2007, he battled the progressive disease with his trademark determination and creativity, and continued to write. He completed his last book, a new Discworld novel, in the summer of 2014, before succumbing to the final stages of the disease.
Pratchett had become a high-profile campaigner for the legalisation of assisted death.
"I would like to die peacefully with Thomas Tallis on my iPod before the disease takes me over and I hope that will not be for quite some time to come, because if I knew that I could die at any time I wanted, then suddenly every day would be as precious as a million pounds," he said in a lecture in 2010.
"If I knew that I could die, I would live. My life, my death, my choice."
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