This past fortnight has really been a kick in the teeth for those of us who love everything geek. First, Leonard Nimoy, Mr Spock to generations of ‘Star Trek’ fans passed on, then ‘The Simpsons’ co-creator Sam Simon died and finally novelist Terry Pratchett died late last week.

Pratchett was a writer who split opinions straight down the middle. To his fans he was a god-like genius, the creator of the phenomenally successful ‘Discworld’ series of fantasy novels. The biggest selling author (by some distance) throughout the nineties was downright vilified by ‘real’ writers because of his success and the lack of ‘seriousness’ with which he treated the publishing industry.

All told, Pratchett wrote some forty novels set on the ‘Discworld’, a setting initially used to parody the excesses of fantasy writing that had developed in the aftermath of the success of ‘The Lord of the Rings’. Fantasy was not in a good place in the early to mid-eighties. To most, genre fiction, and particularly fantasy fiction, was where things like Arnold Schwarzenegger’s ‘Conan the Barbarian’ came from and the idea of someone doing a respectable book in that arena was far-fetched.

Pratchett changed all that. Initially he used the Discworld to poke fun at the conventions of the genre and the earliest books reflect that attitude. But then something amazing occurred: Pratchett, started to become more and more accomplished as a story-teller and the books, always enjoyable, transcended simple good natured ribbing of their subject matter and turned into singularly enjoyable pieces of prose as well told and humorous as anything that’s ever been written.

Pratchett’s novels, rare for fantasy, were actually about something greater than muscular men punching horses. Through the fantastical world at the centre of the novels he examined equality between the sexes (Equal Rites), the insanity of the movie industry (Moving Pictures) and even the power of the media and propaganda in the run up to a war (The Truth and Jingo respectively).

Almost any reader will find something to appreciate in Pratchett’s books. Do yourself a favour and next time you’re in a bookshop, read the blurbs of a couple and pick whichever one catches your interest up. I somehow doubt you’ll regret it. The dialogue sparkles, the plots bounce along at a rapid pace and the characters will live on in your memory long after you’ve finished them. RIP Mr Pratchett.