Fans of Sir Terry Pratchett, the bestselling author, donated tens of thousands of pounds to dementia research yesterday as news of his death spread.
Sir Terry, 66, died at home surrounded by his family and with his cat asleep on his bed, according to his publisher.
His thousands of fans on Twitter were told the news in a series of messages, the first written in capital letters, mirroring how the character Death speaks in his books. It read: “At last. Sir Terry, we must walk together.”
The next read: “Terry took Death’s arm and followed him through the doors and on to the black desert under the endless night.” The final message was simply: “The End.”
The novelist was diagnosed with a rare form of Alzheimer’s in 2007, which he referred to as an “embuggerance”.
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He continued to write, completing his last book, a novel in the Discworld series, in the summer, before succumbing to the final stages of the disease. He also became a vocal campaigner for dementia patients and for assisted dying.
A Just Giving page, set up in his memory, in aid of the Bath-based Research Institute for the Care of Older People, had last night received donations of more than £18,000.
Larry Finlay, managing director of Transworld Publishers, said: “The world has lost one of its brightest, sharpest minds. In over 70 books, Terry enriched the planet like few before him.” He added: “My sympathies go out to Terry’s wife Lyn, their daughter Rhianna, to his close friend Rob Wilkins.”
Sir Terry, almost always pictured in his black hat, suffered from posterior cortical atrophy, a rare variant of Alzheimer’s, which intitially affects the sufferer’s visual perception rather than memory. Writing about his condition in 2010, he likened the condition to a “very, very slow-motion car crash”. “There’s an occasional little bang, a crunch, a screw pops out and spins across the dashboard as if we’re in Apollo 13. But the radio is still playing, the heater is on and it doesn’t seem all that bad, except for the certain knowledge that sooner or later you will definitely be going head-first through the windscreen.”
He had said that if is condition deteriorated he would choose to end his life through assisted suicide, making a documentary in 2011 in which he followed a man’s journey to the Dignitas clinic in Switzerland. Tributes were paid by a range of leading figures. Neil Gaiman, the novelist who wrote Good Omens with Sir Terry, said: “He was my friend for thirty years and a month. I miss him.”
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Sir Tony Robinson, the actor, said Death, one of Sir Terry’s most memorable characters, was curmudgeonly, ironic and funny. “Now he’ll be able to shake him by the hand, and knowing Terry, he’ll be fascinated to see how accurate his depiction was.”
Discworld’s creator
Sir Terry wrote two books a year, selling millions of copies worldwide in 30 languages.
He was named by WH Smith as their most shoplifted author.
He wore a T-shirt to conventions reading: “Tolkien’s dead, J K Rowling said no, Philip Pullman couldn’t make it, ‘Hi, I’m Terry Pratchett’.”