Charlie doesn’t describe himself as a close friend of Terry’s, but they knew one another in the British SF community:
Friendship is context-sensitive.
I wouldn’t describe Terry as a friend, but as someone I’d been on a first-name acquaintanceship with since the mid-1980s. If you go to SF conventions (or partake of any subculture which has regular gatherings) you’ll know the way it works: there are these people who don’t really see outside of this particular social context, but you’re never surprised to see them in it, and you know each other’s names, and when you meet you chat about stuff and maybe sink a pint together.
I haven’t seen Terry since the Glasgow worldcon in 2005. The diagnosis of his illness came in 2007; I’d been spending a chunk of 05-07 out of the country, and after the bad news hit I didn’t feel like being part of the throng pestering him (for reasons I’ll get to later on in this piece.)
And on how Terry’s fame grew exponentially not long after they’d first met … and how it changed the public Terry (it perhaps didn’t do much to change the real Terry):
Some time between about 1989 and 1992, something strange began to happen. I started seeing his name feature more prominently in bookshops, displays of his books planted face-out. He started turning up as guest of honour at more and more SF conventions. When a convention did a signing with Terry, suddenly there was a long queue. And when he walked into a room, heads turned and people began to close in on him. There’s a curious phenomenon that goes with being famous in a particular subculture: if everybody knows you, you become a target for their projected fantasy of meeting their star. And they all want to shake your hand and say something, anything, that connects with what your work means to them in their own head. (If you want to see this at work today, just go to any function he’s appearing at — other than the Oscars — and watch what happens when Neil Gaiman walks into the room. He is, I swear, the human Katamari.)
Being on the receiving end of this phenomenon is profoundly isolating, especially if you’re one of those introverted author types who can emulate an extrovert for a few days at a time before you have to hide under the bed and gibber for a while: you’re surrounded by strangers who desperately want to connect with you and after a time it becomes really hard to tell them apart, to remember that they’re individuals with their own lives and stories and not just different faces emerging from the surface of a weird shape-shifting fame-tropic amoeboid alien. It’s not just authors who get this: if anything we get off very lightly compared to actors, politicians, or rock stars. (For some insight into it, go listen to the lyrics of Pink Floyd’s The Wall.) I should add, this sort of introversion is really common among writers. It’s an occupation that demands a certain degree of introspective self-absorption, alongside a constant distance from the people you’re observing, who — they mostly don’t know this, of course — may provide the raw fuel for your work. So, if you want to hang on to your sanity, eventually you either go and hide for a bit, or you surround yourself with people who aren’t faintly threatening strangers who want a piece of your soul. Which is to say, you selectively hang out with your peers, or folks you met before you caught the fame virus.
Terry was not only a very funny man; he was an irrascible (and occasionally bad-tempered) guy who did not suffer fools gladly. However, he was also big-hearted enough to forgive the fools around him if they were willing to go halfway to meeting him by ceasing to be foolish at him. He practiced a gracious professionalism in his handling of the general public that spared them the harsh side of his tongue, and he was, above all, humane. As the fame snowballed, he withdrew a bit: appreciating that there was a difference between a sharp retort from your mate Terry at the bar and a put-down from Terry Pratchett, superstar, he stepped lightly and took pains to avoid anything that might cause distress.
Anyway, this isn’t a biography, it’s just the convoluted lead-in to an anecdote about the last time I saw him (which was a decade ago, so you’d better believe me when I say our relationship was “situational friend” rather than “personal friend”).
