There’s a kind of grim joke in this title. When, in 2007, Terry Pratchett experienced the first symptoms of the posterior cortical atrophy that went on to kill him, his doctors said he had had a minor stroke. He hadn’t. What he had was much more severe. But he continued writing, releasing four more Discworld novels between 2008 and when he died in 2015. He left behind three completed novels: the final Discworld book, The Shepherd’s Crown, and the last two volumes of the science fiction series he had been writing with Stephen Baxter, The Long Earth.
There was, he insisted, nothing more. Pratchett gave instructions that all his incomplete drafts be destroyed. He didn’t want to end up like Tolkien, every last jotting and note and laundry list dragged out into public view. His quality control was always high, and he was absolutely averse to the sound of a barrel being scraped. And so in 2017 his business manager and literary executor Rob Wilkins drove a steamroller over the hard drive containing all his work in progress. A very Pratchettian moment.
