I finally finished the book today and, in my opinion, it excelled the previous two works of genius. How Mr. Fforde thinks up this magic is truly beyond me. I adored the Wuthering Heights group therapy session and the visit to the land of fictional creatures (Maybe now Perkins is dead they can hire Hagrid to take care of the creatures....then again something tells me Ms. Rowling wouldn't hand over characters to the Nextian Universe so easily ;-) )

There is one thing that constantly nagged away at me though? The book starts in mid-December 1985 and I seemed to gather by the end of the book we had only progressed through a time of one week. Then again time might not run the same way inside Caversham Heights as it does in the Outland but.....either way would I be correct in saying we haven't travelled that much in time? I thought 1986 would finally dawn but it looks like we'll have to wait....but with Mr. Fforde, who knows ;-)

-Nick

First up, welcome to the fforum....

Second up, I'm pretty sure that time in the bookworld is pretty fluid (at least when compared to the outworld) - especially when you consider that a book can cover a timescale of a few hours or several decades in the same number of pages, regardless of how long ago the book was written...

The only relevance to the outworld time is when you cross from one to t'other, at which point I suspect you have to consider exactly where you're reading yourself into in time as well as space... Time must be passing in the bookworld in some form, however, as Thursday's preganancy wouldn't be progressing.

At this point my brains start to dribble out of my ears as I disappear up my own space-time continuum...



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.

Could it be similar to the Narnia/Earth timescale problem? My brain always wobbled on that one!



I drink to drown my sorrows. Unfortunately they've learnt how to swim.

If you think about TEA where Thursday spends time in Jane Eyre, she ages weeks while the book is re-written in hours in the real world. Also, the wedding interruption thing at the end - they've had six years to plan in Eyre-time, but only a few days in Outland time. I don't think there will be real issues with time unless she spends serious amounts of time in a book, and then I suppose the amount of real (Outlander) time that passes would be the amount of time it takes to read or write said book??

Like they say, everything's relative.

It's kind of like the Twin Paradox. It all depends who's moving relative to whom as to who's youngest. I never understood. Bloody Einstein.

I hope that clears things up ;-)

Time in a book depends which page you're on, one suspects.



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.

But also on how many times it's been read by Outlanders? Lucy Deane's reference to trying something again in the next reading of 'Mill on the Floss', or the one after that, suggests that this factor imposes a form of sequential time on characters' non-scripted actions... This would also explain how Mr Rochester could show a series of Japanese tourists around Thornfield, during the same quite interlude in the storyline, without them meeting each other: As they turn up there at dates which are separated by about a year of Outland time, and the book's read much more frequently than that, they actually arrive in different readings.

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

A similar principle to The Restaurant at the End of the Universe maybe? Where you can eat there as many times as you like without actually meeting yourself (because of the embarrasement that usually causes)

Could it be thought of as a Mobius Strip type of timeline?



I drink to drown my sorrows. Unfortunately they've learnt how to swim.

I suppose the most important question is: how much time has passed for Thursday?

I suspect she spent longer in the book than the few days that are imediately obvious (ie by counting the number of nights/breakfasts) as the two generics seem to have done a fair amount of schooling/ character development... and whats-her-name, the female one, has apparently umm ... gotten about quite a bit while Thursday is arround (probably) not merely a night or two's work.

The upper limt is, of course, about 9 months... but I would suspect it is quite a lot less than that, but then I'm not an expert on how much a pregnancy would curtail her activities.

I suspect a more accurate estimate could be obtained from looking at the mentions of release dates of the new OS.... its another thing to look out for when I re-read it.

If forced to plump for a more accurate figure I'd guess 3-6 weeks... but I'll only say that if forced to.

rob

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There are three types of people in the world: those that can count and those that can't.

As I recall, in the upgrade (yes, Jasper's already got an upgrade available for this book) there's at least one place where two days later should be three, if that helps any.