A hard drive containing the late Sir Terry Pratchett’s unfinished works was crushed by a steamroller at the Great Dorset Steam Fair earlier this week, all according to the author’s wishes. Pratchett, author of the Discworld series, among many other sci-fi books, stipulated that any unfinished works at the time of his death 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.” Rob Wilkins, who manages his estate, tweeted photos of the process.
The destroyed hard drive will go on display as part of an upcoming Pratchett exhibition at the Salisbury Museum. According to the BBC, it contained materials for up to ten incomplete novels, and after being rolled over several times, it was put into a concrete crusher to finish the job. Modern technology: no match for the might of big, heavy things.
