Terry Pratchett

SF and Humor Author

Terry Pratchett, author of the popular Discworld series, writes in an article titled "A Life in The Day of Terry Pratchett", "I think I'm probably an atheist, but rather angry with God for not existing." In a 1999 interview he told Anne Gay, "I'm an atheist, at least to the extent that I don't believe in the objective existence of any big beards in the sky. That is a religious position, by the way." He has also referred to himself as a "Victorian-style" atheist, in the sense that he rejects supernaturalism but considers himself culturally and morally Christian.

Pratchett's novels typically cast theocrats and narrow-minded fundamentalists as bad guys (notably Vorbis in Small Gods]), but he is sympathetic to the religious impulse per se as one manifestation of the essentially human quest for meaning.