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

This article has been tagged as Needing work due to its lack of organization.

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Terry Pratchetts hard drive, pre-destruction

Status: Lost

Comment: Unrecoverable, no other known copies

Sir Terry Pratchett (Born in England, 1948) was a science fiction and fantasy author best known for his long running comic fantasy series Discworld which spanned 41 novels from 1983 to 2015.

Pratchett's career as an author began when at the age of 12 his short story 'Business Rivals' was published in the 1962 issue of Technical Cygnett. It was expanded and republished as 'The Hades Business' in Science Fantasy August 1963. After leaving school in 1965 to begin a career in journalism, he apprenticed at a local newspaper 'Bucks Free Press' where among another duties he continued to write, releasing 60 short children's stories under the pseudonym Uncle Jim. While on assignment interviewing the director of a publishing company he mentioned his work and pitched a book he had planned. The director, Peter Bander van Duren of Colin Smythe Limited was sufficiently impressed to pass it on to his colleague, Colin Smythe who approved it for publication. It became his first published novel - The Carpet people.

Of particular interest to fans of Lost Media, before Pratchett hit the major success of his Discworld series. He published thirty more short stories in the Western Daily Press - a newspaper he had worked at in the early 70s. Those stories were largely forgotten, and indeed almost totally lost if not for Pratchett devotee Chris Lawrence. Lawrence had collected the story 'The Quest for the Keys' which had been serialized over several months. In 2022, finding it undocumented elsewhere he brought it to the attention of Terry Pratchett's now long time publisher Colin Smythe who was completely unaware of it's existence. It had for the last 40 years been a collection of newspaper clippings framed on the wall of Lawrence's house. A search of the Western Daily Press newspapers ensured and it was eventually determined that thirty works by Patrick Kearns were indeed by Pratchett under another pseudonym. (Kearns it turned out, was Pratchett's monthers maiden name). Happily, twenty of those short stories were republished in 2023 in the collection 'A Stroke of the Pen: The Lost Stories'.

The Discworld series, launched in 1983 with 'The Colour of Magic' went on to achieve massive success across it's 41 book series. Resulting in animated adaptations, video games starting with the 1986 adaptation The Colour of Magic. Discworld would go on to have many adaptations in different formats.

In 2007, Pratchett announced that he had suffered a stroke, which many speculated would affect his writing. Unfortunately, further diagnosis led to the conclusion he has a "very rare form of early onset Alzheimer's" which he described in a press release on his website as "An Embuggerance". In 2009 he took part in the two part BBC series '‘Living with Alzheimer’s’'. From this point onward editing became more difficult and he began dictating his work to assistant Rob Wilkins. He continued to publish at a slower pace as his disease progressed finishing four more books, two documentaries and many other projects in the next few years. He died from complications of Alzheimer's in March 2015, with his final novel 'The Shepherd's Crown' released posthumously.

In 2017 his long time assistant the previously mentioned Rob Wilkins announced via twitter that he was, in accordance with Pratchetts wishes. Destroying his computers hard drive, which contained all unfinished work. Reportedly there was up to "ten unpublished novels".Neil Gaiman, his long time friend and co-author of Good Omens is quoted as 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." As such, on the 25th of August at the Great Dorset Steam Fair the hard drive was destroyed by a steamrolled known as Lord Jericho. Images of the process can be seen here.

Reportedly, the hard drive fared better than expected from the six ton machine, according to Richard Henry "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". Rob Wilkins tweeted a photo of the destroyed hard drive afterwards with the text "There goes the browsing history".

There are no other known copies of any of Pratchetts incomplete work, and apart from small mentions of possible story leads from close friends, nothing has been said of their content. Due to the author, and his estate taking a strong stance on their destruction as per his wishes. It is extremely unlikely they will ever surface.