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Contents ( 107)

Terry Pratchett is not a jolly old elf at all. Not even close. He’s so much more than that.

As Terry walks into the darkness much too soon, I find myself raging too: at the injustice that deprives us of—what? Another twenty or thirty books? Another shelf-full of ideas and glorious phrases and old friends and new, of stories in which people do what they really do do best, which is use their heads to get themselves out of the trouble they got into by not thinking? Another book or two like this, of journalism and agitprop and even the occasional introduction? But truly, the loss of these things does not anger me as it should. It saddens me, but I, who have seen some of them being built close up, understand that any Terry Pratchett book is a small miracle, and we already have more than might be reasonable, and it does not behoove any of us to be greedy.

I rage at the imminent loss of my friend.

And I think, What would Terry do with this anger?

Then I pick up my pen, and I start to write.

This was the introduction to Terry Pratchett’s nonfiction collection, A Slip of the Keyboard, 2014. I wrote it while he was still with us, could still read it. He told me he liked it, and I was relieved. Terry died on March 12, 2015. I can’t talk to him any longer. I miss my friend.

Credits

Many of the pieces appearing in this collection were first published elsewhere. Permission and copyright information as follows: