Terry Pratchett’s Hard Drive (lost destroyed hard drive of unfinished novels from English author; 2017)

Terry Pratchetts hard drive, pre-destruction

Status: Lost

Sir Terry Pratchett (1948-2015) was a science fiction and fantasy author best known for his long running comic-fantasy series Discworld which ran for a total of 41 books between 1983 and his death in 2015. In 2017 a hard drive containing his unfinished works was destroyed by a steamroller. Five years afterwards a number of lost short stories from earlier in his career - published under a pseudonym, resurfaced.

Terry Pratchett's career as an author began at the age of 12 when his short story 'Business Rivals' was published in his school magazine. After some editing and expansion, it was republished as 'The Hades Business' in the August issue of Science Fantasy 1963. In 1965 Pratchett left school to pursue a career in journalism, beginning work at newspaper 'Bucks Free Press'. In about 1968 while conducting an interview with the the director of a publishing company. Pratchett took the chance to promote his work and pitched a book he had planned. The director then passed it on to his colleague, Colin Smythe who approved it for publication. This led to his first published novel, 1971s The Carpet People.

Lost stories

Before Pratchett found success with his Discworld series he published thirty short stories in the Western Daily Press - a newspaper he had worked at from 1970 to 1972. Published under a pseudonym, and never mentioned by Pratchett they would have been lost forever were it not for Pratchett devotee Chris Lawrence. Lawrence had collected the story 'The Quest for the Keys' (the only one published under the authors usual byline) as it was serialized over several months in the newspaper. In 2022, finding it undocumented elsewhere he brought it to the attention of Terry Pratchett's publisher Colin Smythe who was unaware of it's existence. Completely forgotten, the story had for the last 40 years one singular copy in existence. Which was a collection of newspaper clippings, framed on the wall of Lawrence's house. Following this revelation Lawrence and his wife began searching the British newspaper archives for all fiction in issues of the Western Daily Press. It was eventually determined via similarities in writing, that thirty works by author Patrick Kearns were actually by Pratchett. Kearns it turned out, was Pratchett's mothers maiden name. Twenty of those short stories went on to be republished in 2023 in the collection 'A Stroke of the Pen: The Lost Stories'.

Alzheimer's diagnosis and posthumous destruction of work

In 2007 while on tour in America, Pratchett announced that he had suffered a stroke. In the following months further medical diagnosis led to the conclusion that what he had actually suffered was a symptom of a "very rare form of early onset Alzheimer's" which he described as "An Embuggerance". From this point onward writing and publicity events became gradually more difficult. To get around this he began dictating his work to assistant Rob Wilkins and using a voice recognition program. Additionally he continued to play video games with the help of a specially designed mod. Pratchett continued to publish at a slower pace over the next few years as his disease progressed. Finishing four more books, two documentaries and numerous other projects. In March 2015 he died as a result of complications from Alzheimer's, with his final novel The Shepherd's Crown being released posthumously.

Steamroller destruction

In 2017 Pratchett's long time assistant Rob Wilkins announced that he would be destroying Pratchett's computer hard drive which contained all extant unfinished work. Reportedly there was up to "ten unpublished novels" on the hard drive. Neil Gaiman, Pratchett's long time friend and co-author of Good Omens commented on the decision saying that Pratchett wanted

"Whatever he was working on at the time of his death to be taken out along with his computers, to be put in the middle of a road and for a steamroller to steamroll over them all."

Later that year in August at the Great Dorset Steam Fair, the hard drive was destroyed by a steamroller known as Lord Jericho. Images of the process can be seen here. According to Richard Henry curator of Salisbury Museum "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". Afterwards, Rob Wilkins tweeted a photo of the destroyed hard drive with the caption "There goes the browsing history".

Availability

There are no other known copies of any of Pratchett's incomplete work, and only slivers of information exist about their content. It is however, possible that a sample for a proposed novel was read at a 2016 Discworld convention by Rob Wilkins. Terry Pratchett's daughter Rhianna Pratchett has stated in reply to a question about further Discworld books "No I don't intend on writing more Discworld novels, or giving anyone else permission to do so." It is extremely unlikely if not impossible that the incomplete stories will ever surface.