Eulogies really aren’t my thing, especially not when they pertain to people who are very well known by the general public and not personally known by me (which, let’s face it, are usually the same thing). However, I make an exception here in that I’d like to mark the passing of Terry Pratchett in a way that I failed to do with the death of another of my literary heroes, Ian Banks, last year.

As a child, I greatly enjoyed reading about fantastical worlds. A few books from my early years have stuck with me, but none so much as Pratchett’s Bromeliad/Nomes trilogy and his Johnny Maxwell series, particularly Only You Can Save Mankind; in which the main character plays a spaceflight simulator game only to discover that it’s actually taking place in a faraway galaxy. I also read a few of the Discworld novels and will doubtlessly read more of them in the future, but the Nomes and Johnny were the biggest influence Pratchett had on me (and certainly on my upcoming novel Chronozone Zero).

So I’d like to just take a moment to say a quiet thanks to him for that. I only wish I could have had the chance to meet him.