Re: Footnoterphone
Posted by:
poetscientistdrinker (---.cache.pol.co.uk)
Date: May 02, 2003 12:58AM
Sounds about right - just ignore it.
Try looking at it like this:
The footnoterphone, conceptually, is a radio for books. It connects vast distances in L-space through some unexplained mechanism. I have no idea how radio waves are turned into sound, but I accept that it happens. Furthermore, radio waves can be turned into digital impulses of electrical current (internet radio) or even light (if it goes through a fibre-optic cable). The message is simply turned from one carrier signal to another that can be understood by the recipient.
The mechanism I propose therefore is that Snell does indeed use the footnoterphone to carry his message to Thursday, but that this is then translated into some out-world signal (evidence suggests as a voice inside Thursday's head). This facility would be useful for Jurisfiction for various reasons - not least when operatives are acting outside of a book. Formatting convention in the chronicles of the Nextian world would place these messages as footnotes in the text, for clarity. It in no way suggests Thursday is fictional.
As a better comparison - you send instructions to your computer by hitting the keyboard (if running Microsoft, with your head) but mercifully it doesn't send messages to you by hitting you back.
does this stand up to scrutiny or am I mad?
PSD
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