[16] His initial career choice was journalism and he left school at 17, in 1965, to start an apprenticeship with Arthur Church, the editor of the Bucks Free Press.

[17] While on day release from his apprenticeship, Pratchett finished his A-Level in English and took the National Council for the Training of Journalists proficiency course.

[23] After various positions in journalism, in 1979 Pratchett became press officer for the South West Region of the Central Electricity Generating Board (CEGB) in an area that covered three nuclear power stations.

[b] He later joked that he had demonstrated "impeccable timing" by making this career change so soon after the Three Mile Island nuclear accident in Pennsylvania, US, and said he would "write a book about his experiences if he thought anyone would actually believe them".

He felt that there was a "kind of parity of esteem of information" on the internet, and gave the example of Holocaust denial being presented on the same terms as peer-reviewed research, with no easy way to gauge reliability.

[55] In 2016, Pratchett fans unsuccessfully petitioned the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry (IUPAC) to name chemical element 117, temporarily called ununseptium, as octarine with the proposed symbol Oc (pronounced "ook").

[37] His activities included visiting Borneo with a Channel 4 film crew to make an episode of Jungle Quest in 1995, seeing orangutans in their natural habitat.

[60] One of Pratchett's most popular fictional characters, the Librarian, is a wizard who was transformed into an orangutan in a magical accident and decides to remain in that condition as it is so convenient for his work.

[69] Describing the diagnosis as an "embuggerance" in a radio interview, Pratchett appealed to people to "keep things cheerful" and proclaimed that "we are taking it fairly philosophically down here and possibly with a mild optimism".

[70] Discussing his diagnosis at the Bath Literature Festival in early 2008, Pratchett revealed that by then he found it too difficult to write dedications when signing books.

[82] In an article published in 2009 Pratchett stated that he wished to die by assisted suicide (a term he disliked) before his disease progressed to a critical point.

[96]Public figures who paid tribute included the British prime minister David Cameron, the comedian Ricky Gervais,[97] and the authors Ursula K. Le Guin, Terry Brooks, Margaret Atwood, George R. R. Martin, and Neil Gaiman.

[102] Users of the social news site Reddit organised a tribute by which an HTTP header, "X-Clacks-Overhead: GNU Terry Pratchett", was added to web sites' responses, a reference to the Discworld novel Going Postal, in which "the clacks" (a semaphore system, used as Discworld's equivalent to a telegraph) are programmed to repeat the name of its creator's deceased son; the sentiment in the novel is that no one is ever forgotten as long as their name is still spoken.

[111] Pratchett commented in the Ansible science fiction/fan newsletter, "I suspect the 'services to literature' consisted of refraining from trying to write any", but added, "Still, I cannot help feeling mightily chuffed about it.

[126] Pratchett was made an adjunct Professor in the School of English at Trinity College Dublin in 2010, with a role in postgraduate education in creative writing and popular literature.

[131] He won the 2001 Carnegie Medal from the British librarians, which recognised The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents as the year's best children's book published in the UK.

[134] Four of the five Discworld novels that centre on the trainee witch Tiffany Aching won the annual Locus Award for Best Young Adult Book in 2004, 2005, 2007 and 2016.

In 2016 the SFWA named Pratchett the recipient of Kate Wilhelm Solstice Award, given for "significant impact on the science fiction or fantasy landscape".

[143] In 2011 he won Margaret A. Edwards Award from the American Library Association, a lifetime honour for "significant and lasting contribution to young adult literature".

Comic adventures that fondly mock the fantasy genre, the Discworld novels expose the hypocrisies of contemporary society in an intricate, ever-expanding universe.

[161] Although during his early career he wrote for the science fiction and horror genres, Pratchett later focused almost entirely on fantasy, and said: "It is easier to bend the universe around the story.

[163] Pratchett believed he owed "a debt to the science fiction/fantasy genre which he grew up out of" and disliked the term "magical realism", which, he said, is "like a polite way of saying you write fantasy and is more acceptable to certain people".

[160] He debated this issue with novelist A. S. Byatt and critic Terry Eagleton, arguing that fantasy is fundamental to the way we understand the world and therefore an integral aspect of all fiction.

Pratchett's first two adult novels, The Dark Side of the Sun (1976) and Strata (1981), were both science fiction, the latter taking place partly on a disc-shaped world.

Subsequent to these, Pratchett mostly concentrated on his Discworld series and novels for children, with two exceptions: Good Omens (1990), a collaboration with Neil Gaiman (which was nominated for both Locus and World Fantasy Awards in 1991[180]), a humorous story about the Apocalypse set on Earth, and Nation (2008), a book for young adults.

[185] Pratchett wrote dialogue for a mod for the game The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion (2006), which added a Nord companion named Vilja.

[132] Pratchett also wrote a five-book children's series featuring a trainee witch, Tiffany Aching, and taking place on Discworld, beginning with The Wee Free Men in 2003.

On 25 August 2017 his former assistant Rob Wilkins fulfilled this wish by arranging for Pratchett's hard drive to be crushed under a steamroller at the Great Dorset Steam Fair.

[199] The notes left behind outline ideas about "how the old folk of the Twilight Canyons solve the mystery of a missing treasure and defeat the rise of a Dark Lord despite their failing memories"; "the secret of the crystal cave and the carnivorous plants in the Dark Incontinent", about Constable Feeney of the Watch, first introduced in Snuff, involving how he "solves a whodunnit among the congenitally decent and honest goblins"; and a second book about Amazing Maurice from The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents.

[204] The English author, critic and performer Marc Burrows wrote an unofficial biography, The Magic of Terry Pratchett, published by Pen & Sword on 6 July 2020.