If not you, who else?
The line wasn't very long, though it wouldn't have mattered to me had I joined a queue of hundreds. Events like that day just didn't happen in my city back in the mid-1990s. So you didn't question miracles, you just took a 50-minute train ride from your home town and stood in the rain in order to be part of them.
It didn't take long to reach the front of the line. Plastering a grin that was half excitement, half nerves onto my teenage face, I stepped forward and said hello. He greeted me with a genial smile and took the book I presented to him. He looked at the book I wanted signed and, as he did, I watched that smile turn from genial and pleasant to genuinely delighted. "You know," he said, "I've never been asked to sign a copy of this one before."
"It's my favourite," I blurted out. "I mean, I have all your books but that's my favourite so I wanted to bring it along."
That magnificent, unforgettable smile warmed further. "I'm glad you did," he said, dropping his voice to a conspiratorial whisper, "because it's my favourite, too." Then he took a wooden stamp from his bag, prepped it with an ink pad and marked the dedication page with the image an old-time hourglass surrounded by the words "Ex Libris Mortis, Hic Est Vita Vester". And above the stamp he wrote: "If not you, who else?"
That was how I met Sir Terry Pratchett.
When I was in my early years of high school, nerdy and feeling lonely, I discovered the Discworld series in my home town's sole bookstore. Nothing I encounter in my life will ever be as funny as pages 7 and 8 of The Colour of Magic. "In a distant and second-hand set of dimensions, in an astral plane that was never meant to fly, the curling star-mists waver and part..." My mother still talks about the howling, cackling laughter she could hear coming from my room - how she thought I'd finally lost my mind.
I've never claimed Sir Terry as an inspiration of mine. He wasn't; I've never tried to write like him, nor ape his sense of humour, nor follow in his authorial footsteps. That's because his talent, his wit, his wisdom, his innate and uncanny ability to write nonsense that somehow made more sense than any academic or commentator was too high a bar to aspire. Stan Lee, Simon Furman, Hunter S Thompson - though incredibly talented, legendary writers, these were still mortal men who blazed a trail I could follow. Sir Terry? No. His imagination was just too incomparably big.
Like millions of others around the world I learned of Sir Terry's death this morning via Twitter. Those amazing final messages, written by his assistant, were so wonderfully triumphant and amazingly heartbreaking that they just destroyed me. So, too, did Neil Gaiman's eulogy. I've honestly been in tears on and off all day... this has struck me so deeply. I will miss his books, his insight and his humour. I will miss knowing there's a man like him in the world. And I'll clutch my treasured, signed copy of Only You Can Save Mankind just that little bit tighter.
Greet the Fire as Your Friend,
SF
It didn't take long to reach the front of the line. Plastering a grin that was half excitement, half nerves onto my teenage face, I stepped forward and said hello. He greeted me with a genial smile and took the book I presented to him. He looked at the book I wanted signed and, as he did, I watched that smile turn from genial and pleasant to genuinely delighted. "You know," he said, "I've never been asked to sign a copy of this one before."
"It's my favourite," I blurted out. "I mean, I have all your books but that's my favourite so I wanted to bring it along."
That magnificent, unforgettable smile warmed further. "I'm glad you did," he said, dropping his voice to a conspiratorial whisper, "because it's my favourite, too." Then he took a wooden stamp from his bag, prepped it with an ink pad and marked the dedication page with the image an old-time hourglass surrounded by the words "Ex Libris Mortis, Hic Est Vita Vester". And above the stamp he wrote: "If not you, who else?"
That was how I met Sir Terry Pratchett.
When I was in my early years of high school, nerdy and feeling lonely, I discovered the Discworld series in my home town's sole bookstore. Nothing I encounter in my life will ever be as funny as pages 7 and 8 of The Colour of Magic. "In a distant and second-hand set of dimensions, in an astral plane that was never meant to fly, the curling star-mists waver and part..." My mother still talks about the howling, cackling laughter she could hear coming from my room - how she thought I'd finally lost my mind.
I've never claimed Sir Terry as an inspiration of mine. He wasn't; I've never tried to write like him, nor ape his sense of humour, nor follow in his authorial footsteps. That's because his talent, his wit, his wisdom, his innate and uncanny ability to write nonsense that somehow made more sense than any academic or commentator was too high a bar to aspire. Stan Lee, Simon Furman, Hunter S Thompson - though incredibly talented, legendary writers, these were still mortal men who blazed a trail I could follow. Sir Terry? No. His imagination was just too incomparably big.
Like millions of others around the world I learned of Sir Terry's death this morning via Twitter. Those amazing final messages, written by his assistant, were so wonderfully triumphant and amazingly heartbreaking that they just destroyed me. So, too, did Neil Gaiman's eulogy. I've honestly been in tears on and off all day... this has struck me so deeply. I will miss his books, his insight and his humour. I will miss knowing there's a man like him in the world. And I'll clutch my treasured, signed copy of Only You Can Save Mankind just that little bit tighter.
Greet the Fire as Your Friend,
SF