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Terry Pratchett's Hard Drive Destroyed By Steamroller (nytimes.com)

Posted by EditorDavid on from the commemorative-crush dept.

WheezyJoe writes: In accordance with his wishes, a hard drive formerly belonging to author Terry Pratchett has been crushed by steamroller. According to friend and fellow author Neil Gaiman, Pratchett (who died at 66 in 2015) 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."

According to the article, on August 25, two years after the author's passing, Mr. Pratchett's estate manager and close friend, Rob Wilkins, posted a picture of a hard drive and a steamroller on an official Twitter account they shared. The pictures posted suggest the steamroller was one powered by actual steam.
Minutes later they tweeted a photo of the crushed hard drive -- which will soon be displayed at the Salisbury Museum in England as part of their new exhibit on the life and work of Terry Pratchett.

5 of 161 comments (clear)

  1. Re:I understand, but... by MarkTina · · Score: 4, Insightful

    He wasn't 100% there towards the end and apparently had concerns his work was crap and didn't want anyone digging it up and publishing it when he was gone .. fair enough :-)

  2. Re:I understand, but... by fermion · · Score: 4, Insightful
    If you don't want publishers to scrap every penny from whatever dregs you left behind, the only thing to do is destroy the work. Some writers like Heinlein were probably ok with work being published posthumously. He was well known to believe that he wrote for a paycheck, and everything he wrote was to published. He supposedly said the day that his publisher rejected a work was the day he would walk across the street to another publisher.

    For those who are more selective, destruction is the best option.

    --
    "She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
  3. Re:I understand, but... by drinkypoo · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Implying the father wrote well? I have read Frank Herbert - all of his works - and I don't think the apple fell far from the tree.

    Herbert was perhaps only a good and not a great writer, but he was a great imaginer.

    --
    "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
  4. Re:IDE drive? by alvinrod · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Writers can be a bit weird when it comes to their equipment. It may well be that he still used an ancient machine to actually write his novels that he had been using for some time. If all you're doing is some simple word processing, you could probably get by with using something from the 80's. Probably not a bad idea if you don't want the possibility of distraction.

  5. DELIVERY RECEIVED by Alain+Williams · · Score: 4, Insightful

    MY FRIEND SIR TERRY CAN NOW WORK IN PEACE AT MY HOUSE and complete his books. You may read them when you join us.

    This was first written entirely in caps ... but a soulless slashdot filter complained that that was shouting :-(