Short Story:Final Reward

A short story by Terry Pratchett, in which the author of a wildly popular series of fantasy novels has a midlife crisis, decides he doesn't want to do this any more, and deliberately ends the series by killing off his much-loved central character.

Then there is a knock on the door....

In 2015 film student Ladislav Plecitý created a live action adaptation (in Czech) of this story.

Publication history

• 1988 - G.M. The Independent Fantasy Roleplaying Magazine Vol. 1 No. 2 (October 1988)
• 1996 - Space Movies: II
• 1999 - Vintage Science Fiction
• 2004 - Once More* *with Footnotes
• 2012 - A Blink of the Screen

Annotation

• In the story the author decides to kill off the barbarian hero who made his literary name, so as to focus on more “serious” writings, only for the Barbarian Hero to turn up on his doorstep to complain about being killed off. Compare this story told about Robert E. Howard, creator of the ur-barbarian hero, Conan of Cimmeria: "He's alone one night, and he feels a shadow overtake him from behind, and he knows that Conan stands behind him, with a large axe. And Conan tells him "Stay there, and write!"” (Quoted in the Fortean Times, January 2013, p53.)