SOURCE: Stableford, Brian. “Terry Pratchett.” In Contemporary Literary Criticism 197, edited by Tom Burns and Jeffrey W. Hunter. Farmington Hills, Mich.: Thomson Gale, 2004.

In the following essay, specially commissioned for Contemporary Literary Criticism, Stableford presents a critical reading of Pratchett's background and body of work, focusing on the dominant recurring themes in Pratchett's Discworld series.

The Way to Discworld.

Terry Pratchett was born in Beaconsfield, Buckinghamshire, on 28 April 1948. He attended Wycombe Technical High School before working as a journalist, initially on the Bucks Free Press, then on the Bristol-based Western Daily Herald and the Bath Chronicle. In 1980 he became the press officer for the Central Electricity Generating Board's Western Region, a position he held until 1987. His first published story, “The Hades Business,” written for his school magazine when he was 13, was subsequently sold to Science-Fantasy, where it appeared in 1963. His first novel, The Carpet People (1971), was a children's fantasy...