Sir Terry Pratchett was a noted author and activist. His genre was fantasy, and more than 85 million copies of his books have been sold. He was most noted for his Discworld series of 41 novels.
Sir Terry Pratchett died on March 12, 2015 at the age of 66 as a result of early-onset Alzheimer’s disease (which he referred to as an “embuggerance”). Prior to his death, he was a vocal supporter of Alzheimer’s research and assisted suicide.
Pratchett left a significant number of unfinished works upon his death. These works will never be enjoyed. Pratchett’s daughter, the custodian of the Discworld franchise, has stated that these works will never be published.
More definitively, Pratchett told his friend and collaborator, Neil Gaiman, that he wanted whatever he was working on at the time of his death to be destroyed. More specifically, he asked that his works and computers be put in the middle of the road and run over by a steamroller.
This wish was fulfilled on August 25, 2017. His hard drive was crushed by a vintage John Fowler & Co. steamroller named Lord Jericho at the Great Dorset Steam Fair. The destroyed hard drive was put on display at The Salisbury Museum
Presumably, the destruction was agreed to by his estate trustees. Otherwise, the works would fall into his estate to be dealt with as assets of the estate.
The wishes of authors with respect to their posthumous works are not always fulfilled. Notably, Franz Kafka asked his friend and literary executor Max Brod to destroy all of his works after he died. Brod ignored this request, and as a result, some of Kafka’s most famous works, The Trial, The Castle, Amerika and The Metamorphosis were published after his death. In an essay by Scott McLemee, it is noted that Kafka was a lawyer, and must have known that his intentions set out in a couple of notes would not be binding on his estate trustee.
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