RIP Terry Pratchett

I must have been fourteen, fifteen years old, I was passing through a train station in Northern Ireland and I picked up a copy of Mort, from that point on I was hooked. How could it not speak to me, a gangly awkward teenager, trying to find my way in the world. I devoured the books as they came out, within a few more years I had a healthy stack.

By that time I’d started going to scifi conventions and the great man was doing a signing at one around the corner from where I grew up. Diligently I brought my stack, stood in line and he looked up, saw my stack of books. I said “I hope you don’t mind”

“I don’t.” He said. “It’s the people behind you that you have to worry about. What’s the dedication?” “To ian” I said.

And so it began

“To Ian”
“To Ian, best wishes”
“To Ian, superior felicitations”
“To Ian, with the return of the best wishes from 20000 leagues from beneath the sea”

Years and years later, nighttime drawing in, I’d read those books to the person who is now my wife. Soon her knowledge of all things disk outstripped even mine, then the audiobooks. It’s a surprise to me that our son escaped being called Horace.