This Pausch family photograph shows Jai and Randy Pausch and their children Logan, front left, Dylan and Chloe. Randy Pausch, a cancer-stricken Carnegie Mellon University professor, has written a book, "The Last Lecture" of life lessons he won't have the opportunity to teach to his children.

To millions who have watched him on the Internet or on Oprah Winfrey's TV show, Randy Pausch is the 47-year-old professor dying of cancer who inspired them with his "last lecture," about achieving childhood dreams and living with integrity and joy.

His neighbors in a Virginia suburb know him as the guy biking around the streets for exercise while chattering into a cellphone headset.

That's what the Carnegie Mellon University computer science professor did to expand his 76-minute talk into a book without taking time that he doesn't have away from the people for whom the book was intended: the three children, all under 7, he won't be around to help his wife raise.

"The Last Lecture" is being published this month by Hyperion, after a bidding war that netted a deal reportedly worth $6.7 million, a figure Pausch won't confirm.

The book is the result of a collaboration with the man listening on the other end of the phone as Pausch pedaled and talked during 53 long rides, The Wall Street Journal's Jeffrey Zaslow, who attended the lecture in September and later wrote about it in his column.

The book goes beyond the lecture, giving Pausch more room to tell his kids what he would have tried to teach them over the next 20 years. He counsels them to have fun, tell the truth, dare to take risks, look for the best in everyone, make time for what matters and always be prepared (explaining that's why he usually carries $200 in his wallet).

"I like the book better than the lecture because I like operational advice," he says during an interview at a coffee shop, where he orders hot water and stirs in hot-chocolate mix from a packet he pulls out of his pocket. He avoids the drinks on the menu as a precaution; surgery to remove parts of several organs has left him lactose-intolerant.

He decided to do the book, at his wife's urging, because thousands of people wrote to him after seeing his lecture, wanting him to know his words helped them or loved ones going through cancer or other tough situations.

"We just felt ... if I can find some way to make lemonade for somebody else out of these lemons, then let's do that," he said.

The 6-foot Pausch is thin — his weight has dropped from 182 pounds to as low as 138 — with an almost unnervingly direct stare, bushy brows and thick, graying hair.

He found out in September 2006 that he had pancreatic cancer, an especially deadly cancer with few treatment options. Last August, he learned the cancer had spread. Doctors told him he had three to six months live.

He recently suffered heart and kidney failure. He's in pain all the time and he hasn't been strong enough to ride his bike. He's stopped chemotherapy and spends many days in bed. He emphasizes that he isn't giving up and he's doing what he can to "stretch the clock" so maybe he will live long enough to see someone find a cure.

His prognosis now is muddier, but "there is no respectable physician in the world who would take an over-under bet that I'll be here past December."

On the advice of experts, he doesn't plan to tell his kids he's dying until he looks and acts sick.