Thursday Next series

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The Thursday Next series is a novel series by British writer Jasper Fforde set in an alternate world .

The fictional world of novels

In Forde's parallel world , dealing with literature is a mass phenomenon; Writers and their works enjoy great popularity. Literature is seen as a national treasure and is taken so seriously that there are street fights between supporters of different literary currents. Fantasy and reality mix as people enter the world of literature and characters from literature can appear in the real world. Even time travel is possible in this world.

In 1985 there was no longer a united Great Britain in this universe , as Wales declared its independence in 1854 and existed as a socialist "People's Republic of Wales". In England , which is a republic , there is a lifetime president and the Whig party still exists. During the Second World War , England (as opposed to neutral Wales) was conquered by the Wehrmacht and remained occupied until 1949. In addition, the English troops have been waging the Crimean War against Russia, which is still tsarist, for more than 100 years .

The technical development in the parallel world also proceeded differently. Shorter journeys are made by train or airship , as the jet propulsion never went beyond a prototype and modern aircraft are thus unknown, while tunnels through the center of the earth connect Paris, New York, Sydney and Tokyo.

Vampires , werewolves and ghosts exist in real life and are a constant nuisance to the relevant government agencies.

Fforde builds various literary allusions into his stories. So is our pet from Thursday, a cloned dodo , Pickwick after a main character of the novel The Pickwick Papers by Charles Dickens .

Goliath Corporation

The history and technology of England after the Second World War were strongly influenced by the Goliath Corporation. She supported the country in rebuilding. Under the motto “from the cradle to the grave”, it pervades all branches of the economy and is represented in both houses of parliament . The corporation acts as a secret government and can lead police investigations. It also supplies the weapons for the ongoing Crimean War.

SpecOps

The country is controlled by the paramilitary organization Special Operations Network , abbreviated SpecOps or SO, to which Thursdays unit SpecOps-27 ( LitAgs ) also belongs. The LitAgs are responsible for tracking down forgeries and illegally printed editions of popular literary works. Another SO unit, the ChronoGarde (SO 12), monitors time travel and the stability of the timing. In addition, each area has local representatives who monitor and deal with problematic incidents in the individual regions of the country.

In 1988 SpecOps was divided into at least 64 sub-areas, with the tasks of departments one to twenty being subject to the strictest confidentiality. Little of the SpecOps' work is made public. SpecOps is officially funded directly by the government. But there are rumors that the funding comes from the Goliath Corporation.

Crimean War

The fictional Crimean War ( Crimean war or Crimea ) began at the same time as the historical Crimean War between Tsarist Russia and a coalition around Great Britain (1853-1856). In the series of novels, both sides have been fighting in trench warfare for the Crimean peninsula and the most important fortress, the port city of Sevastopol , since 1854 . In 1975 British troops succeeded in pushing the tsarist units from the peninsula and shifting the front north to the mainland. But there it came to a standstill and has remained in trench warfare ever since.

Genetic engineering

Genetic engineering is well developed and generally accepted in the parallel world, so that home cloning kits that allow cloning with kitchen utensils can be bought. These genetic advances led to a veritable "backbreeding industry" of extinct species. Dodos, pouch wolves and saber-toothed tigers are widely used as pets. Wild giant alks can be found in the cities and there is even a small herd of wild mammoths in England. However, since the complete DNA sequences of the first backbred “retro domestic animals” were not yet available, many of these specimens seem to have defects: Thursdays Dodo has no wings, other birds hatched with pink plumage.

Neanderthals were also revived using genetic remains found in bones . Originally planned as "non-human" test subjects for drug experiments, the Goliath Corporation released them after public protests, and because of their peacefulness they were not suitable as soldiers. They are doomed to become extinct again, since only male clones exist that are incapable of reproduction.

The book world

The book world is home to literary characters and oral traditions . Within this world the literary genres border one another like countries . The world of books exists for every language as a large library that contains all editions of all books. The Great Library has a floor for each letter. In addition, there are 26 underground floors, the fountain of the manuscripts , with the text lake at the bottom. In the well of the manuscripts all unpublished works are located and here the production of new texts takes place.

Jurisfiction

The Jurisfiction is the police of the book world. It ensures that the storylines remain unchanged and that the characters play their roles.

Figures (selection)

  • Thursday E. Next: She is the youngest of three children of the housewife Wednesday Next and a former member of ChronoGarde whose name is unknown. Thursday works as an agent of the Special Operations Network (SpecOps) and is a member of the jurisfiction. In 1973 she served at the front in the Crimean War as a driver of an armored troop transport in a Light Armored Brigade. There she fell in love with her future husband, then Lieutenant Landen Parke-Laine. In a failed attack on Russian artillery positions near Balaklava , most of their unit is killed. Thursday was recognized for her bravery as she returned to the battlefield after the attack was abandoned and recovered the wounded. Thursday and Landen Parke-Laine have a son, Friday, and a daughter, Tuesday. In addition, Thursday imagines a second daughter because of a memory worm: Jenny.
  • Mycroft Next: Thursday's uncle and Polly Next's husband. Mycroft is an inventor, mathematician, physicist and writer of romantic novels. He has an IQ of 270. Inventor of the prose portal. a machine that enables travel between the book world and the real world.
  • Landen Parke-Laine: Thursday's husband and award-winning writer. He served as an officer in the Crimean War, where he lost a leg in an attack.
  • Colonel Next is Thursdays father. He has the gift of traveling through time and being able to slow down, speed up and stop time. He originally worked for ChronoGuard, but was declared non-existent due to inappropriate behavior. Since then he has been traveling through time to avoid being arrested by ChronoGuard.
  • Anton Next: brother of Joffy and Thursday and best friend of Landen Parke-Laine. Anton fought in the Crimean War and is jointly responsible for an unsuccessful attack in which most of the members of his troops, including himself, died.
  • Joffy Next: brother of Anton and Thursday. He is a priest in the Church of the Standard Global Deity and served as a military chaplain in the Crimean War. He is homosexual and has a relationship with SpecOps 14 agent Miles Hawke in "In Another Book".
  • Polly Next: wife of Mycroft Next, who helps him with his experiments and often has to serve as a test subject. She is a gifted mathematician.
  • Bowden Cable: Thursdays colleague and partner at SpecOps-27. He has a somewhat nervous and dry character, but is very reliable and intelligent. His name means " Bowden cable ".
  • Acheron Hades: taught English before becoming a criminal. It has special abilities: it cannot be photographed or filmed and it does not cast shadows. He also feels when another person utters his name. Hades is immune to most weapons, but can be injured with silver. He can show himself in any shape and has the ability to manipulate other people. Few people know what it actually looks like.
  • Aornis Hades: younger sister of Acheron. Like her brother, she has special skills. It can locally decrease entropy and manipulate other people's memories. She wants revenge on Thursday, who is responsible for the death of her brother.
  • Jack Schitt: Head of Internal Security and Weapons at Goliath Corporation. He wants to take possession of the prose portal for the Goliath Corporation and therefore makes a pact with Hades. His persistent failures throw him out of favor at Goliath throughout the book series and he loses his executive position.
  • Mrs. Nakajima: comes from Osaka and is the first person to show Thursday the ability to switch between the real world and the fictional world of literature. Later, she and her husband settle permanently in the world of the novel Jane Eyre .
  • Miss Havisham: from the novel Great Expectations by Charles Dickens . She belongs to jurisfiction and becomes Thursday Next's mentor. Her hobby is breaking speed records with souped-up cars. Her car is manipulated in a car race, which leads to an accident. Miss Havisham returns seriously injured in her novel. There she stages her own end and eventually dies.
  • Yorrick Kaine: is a supporting character from a bad, privately published novel. He succeeds in getting from the world of books into the real world. He quickly made a career in politics, became chancellor and saw himself as the coming dictator in England. He has long been pursued in vain by jurisfiction.
  • Spike Stoker: A member of SpecOps-17 and thus responsible for fighting supernatural creatures, primarily vampires and werewolves. Usually he works alone due to the lack of staff in his department, but is repeatedly supported by Thursday in his life-threatening work. His name is a reference to Bram Stoker , author of the novel Dracula .

The novels

The six books about Thursday Next published so far are self-contained novels, but refer to the previous ones in terms of content.

The Jane Eyre case

(Original title: The Eyre Affair, 2001)

Thursday Next worked in a fictional 1985 as a literary agent (LitAg) for the SO-27 department of the Special Operation Network in London. When the original manuscript of Charles Dickens ' novel Martin Chuzzlewit is stolen, the notorious criminal Acheron Hades is suspected as the perpetrator due to the mysterious circumstances of the robbery.

Next is one of the few who knows what Hades looks like since he was her teacher in a literature class. He tried to seduce Thursday; however, she was able to withstand his manipulations. A higher-level unit, SO-5, therefore believes it could be useful in the search for Hades and hires them.

The mission turns into a fiasco. Hades flees and shoots several SO agents. Next is the only survivor with a gunshot wound on the arm. Mr. Rochester from the novel Jane Eyre gives her first aid and assures her that she will survive. In the hospital, she sees a future version of herself who advises her to look for Hades in her hometown of Swindon. There she meets her family again after a long time. Your uncle Mycroft, a scientist and inventor, has just invented a machine that allows people to enter the fictional world of literature through a portal. In Swindon, Thursday runs into her former fiancé Landen Parke-Laine, whom she resents for testifying against her brother Anton in a military court. During an operation she saves her colleague, a vampire hunter, who gives her a silver bullet as a thank you.

Hades learns about Mycroft's invention. He steals the machine and kidnaps Mycroft and Thursdays aunt Polly, Mycroft's wife. Mycroft is forced to help Hades with a plan to remove characters from Dickens Martin Chuzzlewit's stolen manuscript in order to blackmail the government. Mycroft succeeds in destroying the manuscript, which is why Hades has to steal another. He steals the original of Charlotte Brontë's novel Jane Eyre and kidnaps the main character, so that the novel increasingly disappears. At the same time, Jack Schitt from Goliath Corporation also learns about the portal. He wants to use it to bring plasma rifles that have only worked in fiction into reality. The Goliath Corporation wants to use the weapons in the Crimean War.

Thursday and her SpecOps colleagues manage to locate Hades hiding place in Wales. Hades escapes through the portal into the book Jane Eyre . Thursday and the freed Jane follow him. The novel begins to regenerate. Thursday finds out that Hades is vulnerable to silver and kills him with the silver bullet. To thank Rochester, Thursday changes the previous end of the novel to a new version and returns to his own world. Jack Schitt is trapped in an Edgar Allan Poe collecting tape by her colleague Bowden when Schitt tries to use the portal.

Thursday is reconciled with Landen, the two get engaged again. On a forum about the Crimean War, Thursday publicly announces that the Goliath Corporation's plasma rifles are inoperative. Great Britain then makes peace with Russia.

In another book

(Original title: Lost in a Good Book, 2002)

Thursday Next has become a public figure through her work on Jane Eyre . Soon after her wedding to Landen Parke-Laine, she discovers that she is pregnant. Thursday learns from her father that the world will end on December 12th due to an enigmatic pink substance that was created by a failed experiment by her uncle Mycroft and that covers the whole world with slime. Thursday needs to find out what it is, but Mycroft has retreated into the Sherlock Holmes story of The Greek Interpreter and is unavailable. In addition, Brik Schitt-Hawse of the Goliath Corporation, a half-brother of Jack Schitt, uses ChronoGuard employee Lavoisier to wipe out Landen and blackmail Thursday by demanding that Schitt be freed from The Raven . Thursday's own life is also in jeopardy as Hades' sister Aornis tries to take revenge on her.

Thursday's ability to enter the fictional world by reading aloud has caught the attention of jurisfiction. Under the guidance of Miss Havisham, Thursday begins her training as a legal fiction agent. With her new knowledge, Thursday frees Jack Schitt, but is betrayed by Brik Schitt-Hawse, who wants to capture her and use her skills for the Goliath Corporation. Miss Havisham manages to free Thursday.

Meanwhile, the end of the world draws nearer and finally Aornis forces Thursday to kill himself to save the world. Thursday's father appears at this moment and saves his daughter: he disappears with the pink mass into primeval times.

With Aornis and the Goliath Corporation still following Thursday, Colonel Next offers to take her into an alternate reality until she has her child. Thursday refuses and instead withdraws into the fictional world of an unpublished book.

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In the well of the manuscripts

(Original title: The Well Of Lost Plots, 2003)

The pregnant Thursday Next has withdrawn into the fountain of manuscripts in the book world to protect herself from the Goliath Corporation with the help of the character exchange program and is preparing there for the Great Service Examination of Jurisfiction , which she is required to be promoted to full Jurisfiction Agent has to drop. But Thursday does not find the peace and quiet he had hoped for here either. Their refuge, the novel Caversham Heights , is threatened with ultimate destruction, which Thursday tries to prevent together with the main character of the book.

Several attacks on agents of justice and the introduction of the new book operating system UltraWord require Thursday Next's full attention. In addition, she fights against Aornis Hades, the sister of Acheron Hades, who wants to erase Thursday's memory of her husband Landen Park-Laine, who was killed by Goliath. She gets help from her grandmother, who, like Thursday, can travel to the world of books herself.

In the fountain of the manuscripts it ties in seamlessly with its predecessor, but for the first time plays almost exclusively in the world of books. Jasper Fforde explains much of the background to the book world of the novels, including how new characters are created, where the stories for new books come from and how spelling and grammatical errors come into the texts. This is supported by the targeted use of various stylistic means, such as the increasingly frequent spelling errors when a chapter deals with the Medlar Vyrus .

Something is fishy

(Original title: Something Rotten, 2004)

The title of the novel alludes to a line from Shakespeare's Hamlet (“Something's rotten in the state of Denmark”) and so it is no wonder that the literature clean-up agent is accompanied by Hamlet himself this time and is about a planned atomic end of the world by Yorrick Kaine of Goliath Corporation must oppose. The last chapter contains some curious time paradoxes in which Thursday gets to know both her future self and her unborn granddaughter.

Somewhere completely different

(Original title: First Among Sequels, 2007)

The novel takes place 14 years after there is something fishy . Thursday has officially withdrawn into private life, but continues to work undercover for the officially disbanded SpecOps and even fewer people know that she also works for jurisfiction. Essentially, the point is that time travel has not yet been invented and only works because it is assumed that it will one day be invented. But now it seems that this invention will not be made until the end of time, which is why the whole system threatens to collapse. The only solution to the problem is Uncle Mycroft's recipe, which makes lost eggs traceable. Thursday wants to keep the recipe hidden, but ChronoGarde sees it differently and of course the Goliath Corporation is also involved.

Where is Thursday Next?

(Original title: One of Our Thursdays is Missing, 2011)

Thursday Next disappears without a trace, right in the midst of great tensions that could lead to a war between the literary genres. The novel character from Thursday therefore receives an order from the book world police agency Jurisfiktion: She should determine the origin of book rubble that had fallen down for some inexplicable reason.

Thursday finds support on her behalf in Sprockett, a fully mechanical robot in the shape of a butler. Together they find out which book the rubble comes from and whether the book world Thursday is perhaps the real Thursday after all, which only suffers from amnesia.

The Woman Who Died a Lot

2012. Not yet published in German.

Novels

  • Jasper Fforde: The Eyre Affair. 2001.
  • Jasper Fforde: Lost in a Good Book. 2002.
  • Jasper Fforde: The Well of Lost Plots. 2003.
  • Jasper Fforde: Something Rotten. 2004.
  • Jasper Fforde: First Among Sequels. 2007.
  • Jasper Fforde: One of Our Thursdays is Missing. 2011.
  • Jasper Fforde: The Woman Who Died a Lot (Thursday Next). 2012.
    • not yet published in German

Individual evidence


Web links