Terence David John Pratchett OBE is an English fantasy author (born April 28, 1948, in Beaconsfield, Buckinghamshire, England), best known for his Discworld series. As of March 2005 he has sold approximately 40 million books worldwide. He is also generally regarded as one of the finest satirists currently writing in the English language, and has been compared to such diverse figures as Douglas Adams, Jonathan Swift, Charles Dickens, Lewis Carroll, Evelyn Waugh and P. G.