Terry Pratchett's Unfinished Works Were Just Crushed By a Steam Roller

Say so long to dreams of posthumous Terry Pratchett novels. According to the late author’s wishes, his computer’s hard drive has been destroyed by steamroller, taking any unfinished work with it. According to the BBC, it may have held up to 10 incomplete novels.

The destruction, which no doubt crushed the hearts of many a historian in addition to the megabytes of data, took place at the Great Dorset Steam Fair, a five-day cultural event dedicated to steam-powered machinery.

Pratchett’s longtime assistant Rob Wilkins, who has been managing Pratchett’s estate since the author died in 2015, was the one who found a steamroller to complete the author’s mandate. Pratchett wanted to prevent his unfinished projects from being completed by anyone else. Considering Pratchett’s status as a literary hero, it probably wasn’t a crazy fear. His last novel, published five months after his death, sold almost 53,000 copies in its first three days on the shelves.

Apparently, though, not only are steamrollers hard to find, they’re not as effective for destroying computer hardware as you’d think. “The steamroller totally annihilated the stone blocks underneath but the hard drive survived better than expected so we put it in a stone crusher afterwards which I think probably finally did it in,” Richard Henry, curator of the upcoming Salisbury Museum exhibition Terry Pratchett: His World, told the BBC.

The pieces of the crushed drive will be on display at the museum when the exhibition opens on September 16. And that’s not the only upcoming display of love for Pratchett in Salisbury, his hometown. The city will also be getting a 7-foot-tall bronze statue of the author soon.