Books

Terry Pratchett’s Unpublished Works Destroyed

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31 August 2017

By Alex Khalil

Don’t worry, it’s literally what he wanted.

Terry Pratchett died in early 2015, taking with him a mind that conjured and moulded some of the greatest fiction ever created. From his early works like The Colour of Magic to his final book The Shepard’s Crown. While the full extent of the Discworld series will never be explored, we got so many works from the acclaimed author.

But now, more than two years after his death, his unpublished works have been destroyed, per Pratchett’s request. But instead of just wiping the drives where they were stored, they used a steamroller.

No seriously.

Steamroller to destroy your unfinished works of fantasy and adventure? That’s pretty metal.

It’s what he wanted.

His justification was that he didn’t want someone else to finish them, then release them. Which is fair enough. You don’t want someone else’s grubby hands all over your work.

Richard Henry, curator of Salisbury Museum said:

The steamroller totally annihilated the stone blocks underneath but the hard drive survived better than expected so we put it in a stone crusher afterwards which I think probably finally did it in.’

The author struggled with dementia into the later years of his life, before finally succumbing to a heart attack caused by Alzheimer’s.

The Terry Pratchett exhibit (His World), will be at the museum on 16th September, where the pieces of the hard drive will be shown to the public.

Anyone else thinks this is kind of fitting of the author?

 

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