YAY
I finally finished WOLP yesterday (this trip to Belgium was very useful), so I can come here to this fforum :)

And *this* is the place to talk about the book, right, so I won't bother with spoilers, if you haven't read it you shouldn't be here, like me, this is the first time I ever entered this fforum since it was created, there!

Maybe the subjects have already been discussed (I don't have time to search), but I wanted to highlight/question some things.

1. Comment: I laughed a lot at the lack of u's :)

2. Comment: ditto for the Great Panjandrum :D

3. I got a shock at Miss H.'s death :(

4. Question: the "basic 8 plots": which ones are they? (this one should have a thread of its own though...)

5. Question: ok for all the imaginotransfer machines, the determination of written material in the Outland, etc etc. What about written material *inside* the Well/bookworld? Is it a circular reference?
I got this question halfway through the book, and I think some inklinks might have been given in the last chapters, but I was just reading them avidly on the plane, without much thought, so I still don't have a reply.
What do you think?



Post Edited (09-19-03 10:13)

The eight basic plots, totally nicked from another post somewhere else on the www...

1. Good Man Redeemed (Faust by Goethe)
2. Wheel of Fortune (Bad Man Falling--Includes Macbeth, also includes Greek Tragedies and Dr. Faustus by Marlowe)
3. Stranger in a Strange land (A Connecticut yankee in King Arthur's Court)
4. Mistaken Identity (Comedy of Errors, The Little Dictator)
5. Romance overcomes obstacles (Much Ado About Nothing)
6. Tragic Romance (Romeo and Juliet)
7. Founding A New Nation (The Birds by Aristophones, Birth of a Nation)
8. Encounter with the unknown (The Blair Witch Project)

.. but apparently the number can go up to 37, although they do start to get kind of samey.
[www.ipl.org.ar]
[bang.dhs.org]

Hmmmm....has anyone else noticed that Jasper's books appear to incorporate elements from more than one of these?

I think that probably most good books _ and many not-so-good ones, as well, for that matter _ use more than one of the eight. Let's see... 'The Hobbit', for example, seems to involve (at least) #3,4, 7 & 8.

What the hell is the codeword to get into the special features bit???????!! aaaarggh i'm out of my mind thinking about it!!!!! damn u mr fforde damn u to hell! p.s has neone actually got chapter 13 in their book?

Noone has chapter 13 in any of the books, actually, including TEA and LIAGB. It's deliberate on Jasper's part.

As to the codeword, if you look near the bottom of the list of threads in this Fforum, you'll see a link marked "older messages". If you click that to get to the older posts, you'll see a thread titled "password" which includes some very unsubtle hints.



Post Edited (09-24-03 04:05)

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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

Magda, it's funny cos when I started reading the book and read that part I thought "oh I have to pay attention".
Then of course I was completely absorbed in the book and never thought about it again until I noticed someone asking for the password here.
I went to that thread but after a couple of posts I immediately found out the password, without reading it, I just knew, in my mind, that it was it :)