What?

From Neil Gaiman’s Conversation with Michael Chabon:

In the years that followed, we would have the kind of conversations where Terry would say to me things like, “So I’m done with the Discworld and now I’m going to do this big science fiction series, I’ve come up with it, and this is the plot of the science fiction series.”, and would tell me all about it and get to the end, and I’d say, “Well, that’s all very well, but you should do a book about Death.” And then a week later my phone would ring and I’d pick it up, and a voice would say, “You bastard, it’s called Mort.” and he’d put the phone down.

I saw a post asking about GNU Terry Pratchett today and it occurred to me how wild it is that this man wrote fantasy, yes, but how he wrote about things that were real. He wrote about an act of love and grief, about keeping a man alive through his name and through what he loves, about rememberance, and how when he eventually passed himself we took that act and put it into the real world because that part of his writing was always real.

GNU, a message passed on, not logged, and turned around at the end. It might pass under your hands and be passed on once or a thousand times and each time is an act of love. He may have gone but his name still matters and it is still spoken because he is still loved. It will not be forgotten while that is still true.

GNU Terry Pratchett