Midway through Well, and there are two things I just don't seem to be getting about Jasper's vision of how the BookWorld works. Maybe some of you can address these:

1) There is much mention of unpublished books in the Well being broken up into their component text if they don't find publication eventually. Now, does this mean just unpublished, or actually not written by the author as yet? After all, if it's just unpublished, there usually remains a manuscript somewhere on a shelf that can be randomly reread even many years later by the author, their heirs, rummage sale shoppers, etc. If a book is broken up, does that mean that every manuscript has been completely destroyed? If not, what happens when somebody tries to read a manuscript for a book that's been broken down into Text?

2) Nemo is concerned about his survival. How is this a concern, if people continue to read 20,000 Leagues? I don't have a problem with Verne not having written Mysterious Island in Next's continuum, I suppose, although I thought we were seeing indications that some of the books she's in were written from the viewpoint of our own timeline (the whole ducks/dodos thing).

Any help?

The Nemo thing is the easier of the two. The Nemo in Caversham Heights is a poor copy of the original Nemo, with most of the point of the original character lost. You quite often find piss-poor authors using characters from other sources for no good reason (H*lt!).

Incidentally, is the whole Prometheus thing a very clever dig at H^%&, or is that my twisted mind at work again?



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.

Well... p*sspoor is a bit of an exageration. While Holt is no JFf.. or TP, he ain't that bad. Admittedly some of his more recent books have been a bit dire (a bit like Rankin) but I do enjoy his earlier stuff (which tends to draw more on miffical characters)... and still buy his new novels in hope.

As for the questions, the second has been answered nicely, and I'm not too sure about the first. Maybe the manuscripts for deconsructed books are lost or destroyed in the real world, afterall it seems to be only the books that are totally without redemption that are destroyed and maybe no-one would miss their manuscripts... but I'm not sure... look out for further revelations in TN4

rob


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That statement is either so deep it would take a lifetime to fully comprehend every particle of its meaning, or it is a load of absolute tosh. Which is it, I wonder?
Terry Pratchett, Hogfather

I don't think any of my unpublished ms have gone missing yet. Maybe there's hope for them after all !

Mysteriously, I still have the ms for the first version of 'Navajo Rock', which was substantially reworked a few years later to produce the published version. At least I did last time I looked in that drawer.

Here's an explanation of the H%^& thingummy...

Mr Holt makes a fool of himself



Post Edited (07-18-03 23:25)

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.

Your link isn't there, PSD.

Hello. I can't get it in, either ... has the BB code been disabled? OK, you'll just have to cut and paste;

[www.jasperfforde.com]

Or is it the # in the url?



- - -
I am very interested in the Universe. I am specialising in the Universe and everything surrounding it. - E. L. Wisty

Yup, taking out the # lets it work - you'll have to scroll down to SFX Magazine then....



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.

really, that mister h*lt is quite far up his own behind, isn't he?

well, i shan't be borrowing one of his books from the library again... and if i do, i shall return it late!

nggy

Really, the first question is the more difficult. What *does* happen to all the copies of Deane's novel (can't remember the name of it right now) when it gets demolished? Say it had a print run of two to three hundred thousand (it seems like the author is popular, even if bad) copies. Do all of those copies go missing? Does somebody somewhere open the book to see blank pages? Seems like this sort of thing would get rapidly noticed in the Outland... especially Thursday Next's version, where there's a LiteraTec division of SpecOps.

Unless, of course, one of the mysterious lower numbered divisions of SpecOps is the one to deal with Demolished Book Retrieval.

Wait, a minute! Deane got demolished? I thought he gets to live "happily ever after" with the maidservant whose name I've forgotten. *Note to self: read book again!*

In answer to the book demolishment question...I vaguely remember something about demolished books going missing from shelves and being perceived by readers as misplaced. It's sort of like the nursery rhymes being forgotten when their characters are on strike.

Then again, I may have subconsciously made all this up.



Post Edited (07-22-03 06:15)

That would make sense - the removal of Mr Q from Chuzzlewit caused most readers to notice something was vaguely missing, but not anything specific. More flexibility in the timestream, evidently?



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.

Deane's book doesn't get demolished, it's just "withdrawn" for a while (and stored down by the Text Sea, in case the decision to scrap it is made) during the period when he & Mimi were hiding: After Thursday invokes the Great Panjandrum and his innocence is confirmed he & Mimi are granted the 'internal plot adjustment' that they'd wanted, so that they can get married & live happilly ever after... and the book suffers a decline in sales because the ending is so atypical for a Farquitt.

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Thanks, Simon. Thought I was losing it for a while there.