When Discworld creator Sir Terry Pratchett passed away last week, a tremendous sense of loss rippled through his dedicated fanbase. Now, a group of those fans are turning to code in an effort to keep the author alive.
It all started as an endearing tribute, drawing on one of Pratchett's best-loved books, 2004's Going Postal. In the novel, a telegraph-style system known as "Clacks" was used to pass the name of a deceased character endlessly back and forth, keeping his memory alive. But where the book had "GNU John Dearheart" -- the prefix being a basic code to instruct clacksmen to pass on, not file, and return the message -- the internet gives us GNU Terry Pratchett.
A post on Reddit initially drew on the idea as a way to keep the writer's name permanently in flotation on the internet. An echo chamber of "GNU Terry Pratchett" posts followed, but that wasn't enough.
Soon, a dedicated thread appeared, where users started posting actual code to embed on websites. It doesn't do much -- simply causes the phrase "GNU Terry Pratchett" to appear in headers or in the background data of a page -- but it's a wonderfully appropriate and strangely poetic way to keep Pratchett alive.
Developers have been coming up with further tweaks, with ways to include the subtle memorial into everything from Java and Wordpress, to invisible Gmail signatures. Reddit user SillySosis even posted a Chrome extension to Github, which displays an icon in the browser's address bar when a site with the code embedded somewhere in its digital nethers is loaded.
Elsewhere, another group of fans has launched a Change.org petition aimed at convincing Death -- one of the author's most popular characters -- to "reinstate Terry Pratchett". Although the campaign is on its way to 30,000 signatories, the reaper himself has not yet responded.
This article was originally published by WIRED UK
