I found this news terribly sad, especially at this time of year. Terry Pratchett's books are- for me- synonymous with Christmas.

Since I was an older child/younger teenager I have without fail received the latest novel in the Discworldseries as a Christmas gift from my parents. A lot of people of whom I am fond- from Stephen Fry to mcgazz, sniff at Pratchett whilst harbouring fondnesses for other forms of fantasy/sci-fi. Still more sniff at the whole genre in general, or more specifically the kind of slightly mad fan base it engenders and nurtures. To the second charge I can only offer the old saw that, when thousands gather in absurd garb, sing songs and spend inordinate amounts of money for love of sport, society blesses it as healthy, heterosexual and normal; when thousands gather in absurd garb, sing songs and spend inordinate amounts of money for love of fiction, society stigmatises it as socially retarded, homosexual and weird. From any objective standpoint, is there any material difference between the "Statto"-style football bore and the Comic Book Guy? Of course not.

To the first and more knotty charge, I confess that Pratchett's books are hardly high art, but they exhibit a deeper, more compassionately humanistic outlook than, say, current hot potato/cold fish Philip Pullman's, a more inherently sceptical and believable school of magic and brand of witchcraft than JK Rowling's and a more internally consistent and sharply allegorical , or-more accurately-satirical, mode of writing than pretty much every other fantasy writer content to just throw in goblins for goblins' sake, from Tolkien through Gemmell.

And the man's a Carnegie Medal winner, which is not to be sneezed at. I also managed to get an A1 in Higher English based in no small measure on analysis of two of his novels, hard to do if they were just throw-away spoofs of the Bored of the Rings/Barry Trotter variety.

As Pratchett himself has pointed out, he was planning on dying anyway; the novels would not and could not last forever. What's distressing is not that the end of a thoroughly diverting, entertaining and -sometimes- thought provoking series will probably come sooner than was hoped. It's that such a prolific and sparky mind will now almost certainly be systematically dismantled by a thoroughly detestable and malignant disease that blights far too many, the existence of which refutes the idea of a benevolent creator more eloquently than any harmless tale of boy wizards, talking polar bears or walking pieces of Luggage ever could.