A biography by Colin Smythe
 

Terry Pratchett: born 28 April 1948 Beaconsfield, Bucks. Major source of education: Beaconsfield Public Library (though
school must have been of some little help). After passing his 11-plus in 1959, he attended High Wycombe Technical High
School rather than the local grammar because he felt 'woodwork would be more fun than Latin'. At this time he had no real
vision of what he wanted to do with his life, and remembers himself as a 'nondescript student'.

With his short story The Hades Business published in the school magazine when he was thirteen, and commercially when he
was fifteen, Terry was obviously in line for a bright future. Having got five O-levels and started A-level courses in Art, History
and English, he decided after the first year to try journalism, and when a job opportunity came up on the Bucks Free Press, he
talked things over with his parents, and left school in 1965. While with the Press he still read avidly, took the National Council
for the Training of Journalists proficiency class and also passed an A level in English while on day release. He was already
writing reviews of our publications before I met him. He had interviewed my co-director Peter Bander van Duren regarding his
book on education in the coming decade, and mentioned to him that he had written a book called The Carpet People and would
we consider it for publication? Yes. It was a delight, and after some delays (not unusual for a small publisher) we published it in
1971, with a launch party in the carpet department of Heal's in Tottenham Court Road. It received few reviews, but those few
were ecstatic, with it being described as being 'of quite extraordinary quality' (Teacher's World) and 'a new dimension in
imagination ... the prose is beautiful' (The Irish Times). What the reviews would have been like had reviewers seen the
illustrations in colour - Terry coloured the illustrations in a handful of copies - can only be guessed. It was obvious that here was
an author we had to publish.

The Carpet People was followed by The Dark Side of the Sun (1976) and Strata (1981), both written on dark winter evenings
when Terry had nothing better to do. Having left the Bucks Free Press for the Western Daily Press in 1970, he returned to it in
1972 as a sub-editor, and in 1974 joined the Bath Chronicle. (At this time he also produced a series of cartoons for our
monthly journal Psychic Researcher describing the goings-on at the government's fictional paranormal research establishment,
'Warlock Hall'.) In 1980 Terry was appointed publicity officer for the Central Electricity Generating Board (now PowerGen)
with responsibility for three nuclear power stations ('What leak? -- Oh, that leak'), where he was working when we published
the first of the Discworld novels, The Colour of Magic, in 1983. Terry's paperback publisher at the time was New English
Library, but they failed to market his works properly - their being taken over by Routledge at the time did not help matters - and
I was able to get them to forego their option for the next title, The Colour of Magic, and interest Diane Pearson at Corgi, and
she in turn convinced the company to take it.

Corgi succeeded in getting BBC 'Woman's Hour' to broadcast it as a six-part serial, immediately after which NEL rang to ask
whether the paperback rights were still free: of course, they were too late. Corgi's publication of the first Discworld novel was
the turning point, and the BBC later broadcast his third novel, Equal Rites, also on 'Woman's Hour'. At the time, I was informed
that no other books had generated so much reaction from their listeners.

The Light Fantastic was published in 1986, by which time it had become obvious to Terry and myself that if he was to maximise
his potential, then he had to move to a major publishing house, as my company was incapable of coping with bestsellers, and
that this should be done while we were friends. I suggested to a friend of mine at Gollancz, David Burnett, that they should
consider taking Terry onto their SF list, and although they had never published fantasy before, only traditional SF, we initially
struck a co-publishing deal for three titles, Equal Rites, Mort and Sourcery. With Terry's increased popularity, however, it
became obvious that this arrangement would cause a conflict of loyalties for me, so it was terminated and I became his agent.
Until the appearance of The Last Continent, all Discworld novels were published in hardcover by Gollancz, while Corgi
published the paperback editions (except Eric).

In September 1987, soon after he had finished writing Mort, Terry decided that he could afford to devote himself to full-time
writing, rather than merely doing so in his spare time after work: he thought he might suffer a drop in income for a while but that it
would pick up in due course - and anyway, he enjoyed it more than fielding questions from the Press about malfunctioning
nuclear reactors, so he resigned his position with the CEGB (about which he says he could write a book if he thought anyone
would believe him). His sales - and income - picked up very much more quickly than he expected, and his next Gollancz
contract was for six books, with much larger advances. Since then, sales have continued to improve, and in 1996 both
Maskerade and Interesting Times were in the top ten hardcover and paperback lists of titles most in demand prior to Christmas,
while Soul Music (published by Corgi in May 1995) spent an unbroken run of four weeks in the no.1 position on the paperback
best-seller list. Recently I read that Reaper Man was the eighth fastest-selling novel in Britain in the past five years: a remarkable
achievement for any book, let alone a so-called 'genre' novel.

1996 saw the publication of the third Johnny Maxwell novel, Johnny and the Bomb, as well as playtexts by Stephen Briggs, of
Mort, Wyrd Sisters, and Johnny and the Dead (this by Oxford University Press), and Gollancz's publication of Feet of Clay,
described by them as a 'chilling tale of poisoning and pottery', featuring, among others, Commander Sir Samuel Vimes, Captain
Carrot and the City Watch. The Pratchett Portfolio of Paul Kidby's illustrations of Discworld denizens, with accompanying
text by Terry, was published in September and November saw the publication of Hogfather, the paperback edition of
Maskerade, and the release by Psygnosis of Perfect Entertainment's game, Discworld II: Missing, Presumed.... As to sales,
Hogfather and Maskerade shared the honours by being top of the hardcover and paperback lists respectively two weeks
running. It was the third time Terry had had books in the no.1 positions in both lists simultaneously, and as far as I know, no
other author has succeeded in doing this even once... And Hogfather held the no.1 position in the hardcover fiction list for five
weeks. The Times stated that by their calculations, he was probably the highest earning author of 1996 in Britain, and certainly
had the greatest sales.

1997 saw the publication of Jingo, in which Ankh-Morpork and Klatch go to war over an island in the Circle Sea that tends to
rise and sink, and the Patrician and the City Watch have to settle matters, the publication of Discworld's Unseen University
Diary for 1998, and the transmission of Cosgrove Hall's cartoon series Wyrd Sisters, with Astrion releasing it and Soul Music
(which has yet to be shown on British TV) on video. Corgi have published the illustrated film-scripts of both. Stephen Briggs'
adaptations of Guards! Guards!, and Men at Arms were also published that year.

Terry's books do not need listing here, but the twenty-second (and first hardcover to be published by Transworld's Doubleday
imprint) - The Last Continent (definitely not about Australia, but just vaguely Australian) - was published at the beginning of May
1998 and to date has been eight weeks in the no.1 position in the hardcover fiction best-seller list in Britain. The next, Carpe
Jugulum, in which the witches battle vampires for the Kingdom of Lancre, will be published at the beginning of November.

Also in May, Corgi published The Tourist's Guide to Lancre by Terry, Stephen Briggs and Paul Kidby, and Terry and Paul are
at work on Death's Domain, while all three are working on, with the aid of Tina Hannan, a collection of Discworld recipes, both
for publication next year. Terry has also been working closely with Perfect Entertainment on the third computer game, this one in
3-D, called Discworld Noir, also for next year. Later this year Steve Jackson Games will be issuing a GURPS Discworld Game
volume, with contributions by Terry and illustrated by Paul Kidby.

Of his books for young readers, Truckers, the first volume of what is known in the USA as the Bromeliad Trilogy, was a
landmark in that it was the first children's book to appear in the British adult paperback fiction best-seller lists, and in due course
it was followed by Diggers, Wings, the revised version of The Carpet People, and all three Johnny Maxwell books, Only You
Can Save Mankind, Johnny and the Dead, and Johnny and the Bomb.

Terry has also written a number of short stories, three of which have Discworld themes. The most recent, 'The Sea and Little
Fishes' will only be published this autumn, in a collection edited by Robert Silverberg, entitled Legends. He finds that they
involve him in almost as much work as a full-scale book, and if he is already writing a novel - which is almost all the time - he
finds it very difficult to stop and change tracks, as it were, and write a short piece, so there are fewer of that genre around than
one might expect. A non-Discworld story, 'Once and Future', appeared in a collection in the USA in 1995, but it has not yet
been published in Britain.

When he took up his position with the Western Daily Press in 1970 he moved, with wife Lyn (whom he had married in 1968),
to a cottage in Rowberrow in Somerset where their daughter Rhianna was born. When he found he could not enlarge the
cottage further, the family moved in 1993 to what he has described as 'a Domesday manorette' south west of Salisbury, and
alert fans will have seen pictures of this on the TV interview at the time Soul Music was published. Just before they moved,
Terry slipped outside the front door of the cottage, hit his head, and mildly concussed himself, blotting out his memory of the
previous few hours. Unfortunately, he had received a cheque from me that morning for a rather large sum of money. He knows
he put it somewhere safe, but still has no recollection where, and it has yet to turn up. Needless to say, it was stopped and a
replacement issued.

What else? He is already at work on another Discworld novel, presently called Uberwald Nights, and I think he has promised to
write another children's book for Doubleday, but much depends on what bright ideas he's had of late. (Very early on in the
writing of the Discworld series, he had written the prologue of another SF novel as the beginning of what he planned to call 'The
Long Earth Series', but it was decided there was still enough material to fill some more Discworld novels and 'Long Earth' was
put on the back burner, where it still remains - though at some time in the future it may well be resurrected.)

His work for the Orang-Utan Foundation is common knowledge, but what is less well-known is that he recently did a year's stint
as Chairman of the Society of Authors, and was chairman of the panel of judges for the 1997 Rhone-Poulenc Prize.

His fiftieth birthday at the end of April was celebrated by a party hosted by Transworld. While news of a celebration could not
be kept from him, I think that its size - fifty guests to a dinner at the Ivy Restaurant in Soho, with various original presents - took
him completely by surprise. But what hit the headlines was his appointment as an Officer of the Order of the British Empire in the
Queen's 1998 Birthday Honours List in June, 'for services to literature'. The initial soundings-out from Downing Street about it
came as such a surprise to him that initially he thought it must be an elaborate hoax.

The latest report on himself appears on the proof jacket of Carpe Jugulum: 'Terry Pratchett is fifty and lives behind a keyboard
in Wiltshire, where he answers letters in a desperate attempt to find time to write. He used to grow carnivorous plants, but now
they've taken over the greenhouse and he avoids going in. He feels it may be time to get a life, since apparently they're terribly
useful.'

Colin Smythe

1996-98