OK risky one this but have been giving some thought to Mary's imaculate conception. OK so what if the same thing happened to Jesus's Dad as happened to Landen. Chrono Guard would have a lot to answer for, and where would it leave the Pope?

Hee. I like.

It makes a disturbing amount of sense, actually.



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Do something pretty while you can...

Is it possible to bookjump into "holy" books? If so then CAN one change the storyline while there, or would there be divine intervention to prevent this? After all, if demons & vampires exist then why not deities?

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"This was willed where what is willed... can get rather silly."

And is the god named in all the books one character, or many? (Even, is Old Testament God the same person as New Testament God? If so...schizophrenia ahoy, hope he doesn't get access to the prose portal!)

Same question about characters that have been written about a lot, actually - how many Dracula's are there?



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Do something pretty while you can...

I suspect the Bible may actually be un-jumpable owing to the number of interwoven narrative strands by different writers, but that's just my private belief.

Minsky says characters in fan fiction tend to get very stressed because of multiple authorship. Unfortunately that's _all_ he'll say. He just walks off giving me one of those "all right, if you humans are the superior species you think you are, it won't be any trouble to you to work it out, will it?" looks.

It can be a humbling experience to be owned by a cat. ;-)



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That which does not kill us makes us stranger.
(Llewelyn the dragon, Ozy and Millie)

Sarah

H'mmm.
If (A) it's only changing the original manuscript for a book (or the Great Library's version of it...) which changes other copies of that work, and changing any other copy only affects its own future, then doesn't this mean that every copy's version of a character is (at least potentially) separate from all of the others? After all they could be affected y different changes... Or, does making changes to multiple copies of a work just leave you with single versions of each character but give these conflicting sets of parallel memories?

What effect does having two or more different artists create (differing) pictures of a single character have on that character?

Do characters in plays develop multiple versions once they've been portrayed differently by two or more separate actors, or remain as single characters but with multiple personalities each, or what?

And, on a related theme, can one jump into the "shooting script" for a movie which has already been not just completed but released and make changes to its storyline which will alter all of the existing prints of that film?

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"This was willed where what is willed... can get rather silly."

Isn't it the original manuscript that has to be changed, not the Library copy?

And after what Minsky said, I'll never write another fanfic again... poor characters...



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There's a hole in my creativity bucket and it's all leaked out.

It seemed to be the Library's copy that was used for fixing the bloophole in 'Great Expectations'. Maybe what the Library has is the true essence of each book, thus providing a route into the original versin even if that no longer has a physical existence?

Can't be that, surely, because then Hades taking the original of Jane Eyre wouldn't have been such a big thing...

Maybe the library just happened to have the original copy of Great Expectations.



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Do something pretty while you can...

Hmm, yes. Confusticating.



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There's a hole in my creativity bucket and it's all leaked out.

I don't even want to think about characters changing in different versions of books. I sometimes have enough problems making mine do what they should anyway ! Some are more co-operative than others but they nearly all start doing things I hadn't expected. Sometimes they come up with better dialogue than I do.....

Have just been boning up on the library...

Thursday observes that the library must hold a *copy* of every book (my emphasis). The UAofW cat does not contradict this with anything to intimate 'original manuscripts'. (pg 164, UK trade paperback)

The UAofW Cat also refers to the 'core of the book' - 'the idea, the notion, the *spark*' (emphasis Mr Ff) (pg 165) This suggests that whatever the library copies are, they aren't 'the true essence'. This is consistent with Thursday having to select an edition of Great Expectations (pg 170) - if the library held the 'essence' of a book then only one edition would be required.

Musing on the significance of trying to enter Poe through 'an unstable verb in the third paragraph' (pg 168) and Miss Havisham saying that book-to-book transfers are 'sometimes possible' suggests that certain books are harder to crack into than others - and theoretically the library is the easiest place (read 'safest') to jump from and back to. The danger with Poe appears to be that his books present difficulties with reaching the library again - and that the link to other works appears to easier to cross. The booksplorers that were lost appear to have been trying to find a way into these works that didn't require the library. Later (chptr 25) we learn that the Sherlock Holmes books are similarly 'locked out'.

Unfortunately we aren't told which edition of Great Expectations Thursday and Miss Havisham jump into, as this would clear up the whole thing.

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My guess, for what it's worth, is that all copies of a book are lniked to the original manuscript and replicate it word for word unless altered by (for example) somebody breaking in using the prose portal. Jumping into any copy is therefore the same as jumping into the original. The clever bit is this - if the original exists then you jump into the original - and any change affects all copies - including the one you're in. If the original no longer exists then the copy is, to all intents and purposes, the 'original' - with the result that any change to it will only affect copies made from that particular copy.

This means that the great library only has to have a copy about - not neccessarily the original manuscript - explaining why Jane Eyre was in the Bronte Parsonage to be stolen in the first place.

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Incidentally I believe that the world of fiction is essentially text-based, which makes dealing with it much harder fo us - we have to use a language developed for three-dimensions plus time to one where time is variable for narrative effect, and dimensions of space merely a function of adjectives. charatcers are not 'people' but collections of words, catchphrases and descriptions. It's a bit like 'flatland', for those who've heard of it - basically, how would you describe our world if you lived in only two dimensions?

Thoughts?



Post Edited (05-29-03 01:27)

PSD

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This is the work of an Italian narco-anarchic collective. Don't bother insulting them, they can't read English anyway.

Oooh, very good.

Like the theory about copies and originals, anyway. Actually... do you mean only if you jump in in the *library* that you get to the original copy? Because, otherwise, my point about Hades stands - because the original of Jane Eyre existed, he could have jumped into any copy and been in the original, and altered it.

I thought that when it came to books that were hard to jump to, it was a combination of things - first, finding a route to them through books that were already explored (actually, why? why not jump straight in? Hmmm. I guess you can't jump straight in unless the book's already been "opened" to visitors. But in that case, how did Miss H jump into the laundry instructions?), and second, the actual dangers running around in the book. (Haven't checked this out, but I vaguely remember a bit about someone going into sort of jungle exploration books?)



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Do something pretty while you can...

PSD, this "flatland" you speak of, are you talking about the book by edwin abbott? if you are, i've just downloaded it for my palm pilot. (actually, even if you aren't, i've just downloaded it for my palm pilot.)

It says it's a romance...urk.

I've downloaded metamorphosis by kafka too, in case i need to counter it.



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Dante - this is why I realised bookjumping had to be more complicated than it first seemed. I reckon some books have to be harder to get into via the library (or anywhere else) and are more easy to reach indirectly through other books. This avoids having to 'open' books first - either they can be reached or not. The comment about being 'page accurate' suggests that certain scenes are also easier to reach (pg 165).

This more complicated theory does present trouble with the importance of the original manuscript - if you read the text as being accurate. My reading of it now is that the importance of the original isn't so much that you can jump into it - my theory has it that you reach that anyway - but that you can then destroy the original once you get into it. This theory relies upon Hades and Thursday having misunderstood the importance of the original - which I think is perfectly possible. Neither Thursday nor Hades is perfect, so it's possible - especially Thursday, who's new to the whole world of bookjumps.

And yes, some books seem more dangerous due to the difficulties of getting out, rather than in (including Poe, it would seem - maybe the search is for a way that remains stable enough to exit by?).

As an aside, I suspect the library may also exist purely as literature too - and thus represents a 'safe' book through which anywhere else can be reached without too many risks.



PSD

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This is the work of an Italian narco-anarchic collective. Don't bother insulting them, they can't read English anyway.

Hmm...theories that rely on the main characters being wrong about something (when we're not told they're wrong, ever) always seem kind of fanwanky to me. (for anyone not familiar with the term, to fanwank = to come up with variably likely explanations for an apparent plot hole, which have no support in the text)

Plus, was Jack Schitt not just imprisoned in one copy of the Raven, and he didn't go into the original? Did we get told if he turned up in all copies of it?

Seems like I'm just picking holes in your theories without coming up with my own, here. Sorry!

So to muck up a book, you can jump into *any* copy and do stuff, as long as the original still exists, and you then destroy the original when you come out? Actually, that does make sense, because otherwise it would be like a different universe for every copy of the book. Hmm. Actually, Aunt Polly met Wordsworth even going in through a copy, so it must all go into the same universe.

But then, wouldn't it be safer to destroy the original copies of every book, because then they couldn't be tampered with? (Actually this applies anyway, and is a general question. I guess because hardly anybody knew you could bookjump, but shouldn't the Litera-Tecs be doing something about it now?)

And does it mean when you're in a book and change something - for example, when Thursday got Rochester to say "sweet madness" - that line would have turned up in every copy of the book even if she hadn't been in the original?

Actually, I'm kind of convinced.



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As far as I could tell, the Library editions don't necessarily corrisopnd to physical editions, being as they are, bound in red or green. So, in the outside world, you need an original copy to affect every other copy, although, presumably, if you got hold of a copy that was sent to a particular printers for typsetting, you could affect one edition of a book. However the Great Library copies seem to be different, perhaps because, being inside fiction, they are bound by different rules.
That's my musings on the topic for what it's worth.



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I agree, actually. For non-library copies, jumping into a particular book and changing things only effects that book, and any other books that were printed using it for a basis, either directly or indirectly. So altering the original manuscript of Jane Eyre effects all copies, because they all derive from that manuscript. Jumping into a mass market paperback copy is unlikely to cause trouble in any other copy, since no other books (or editions) were copied from that particular book.

Library copies may be a different issue altogether. I suspect that a library copy represents in some fashion all the books in that particular edition of the book, or the essence of (that version of) the story in some manner. Need more thought on this....



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"I've often said that the difference between British and American SF TV series is that the British ones have three-dimensional characters and cardboard spaceships, while the Americans do it the other way around."
--Ross Smith

I didn't start up trying to plug holes - I only realised they were there when I started thinking about it.



PSD

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This is the work of an Italian narco-anarchic collective. Don't bother insulting them, they can't read English anyway.