Acknowledgments
First, my thanks to Carolyn Mays and Josh Kendall and all the team at Hodder and Viking for their steadfast support and understanding during the final stages of the book, where events of a daughtering nature conspired to render the manuscript past the ideal delivery time.
My thanks to Dr. John Wooten for his valuable contributions to the understanding of Nextian Physics, and for being at the end of an e-mail if I had a query with regard to the best way to mangle physics while still looking vaguely correct.
The illustrations were drawn by Bill Mudron and Dylan Meconis of Portland, Oregon, and they have, as usual, surpassed themselves in their depiction of the Nextian Universe. Bill can be found at www.excelsiorstudios.net and Dylan at www.dylanmeconis.com.
My apologies to the many, many authors who have used the hollow earth notion as the setting for a book. It must have been done before, and I would expect the mechanics of how it functions would be universal, as the concept has a tendency to write itself. In case of unavoidable parallels, my apologies.
BookWorld cartographers. My thanks to the following for submitting wonderful ideas to me about the possible shape and layout of Fiction Island: Alex Maunders, Robert Persson, Laura, Catherine Fitzsimons, Geoffrey Elliot-Howell, Michael OConnor, Ellie Randall, Steve James, Elizabeth Walter, Derek Walter, Theresa Porst, Sarah Porter, Dhana Sabanathan, Alex Clark, Loraine Weston, Elisabeth Parsons, Jane Ren, Birgit Prihodko and Helen Griin-Looveer.
I am also indebted to my new agents, Will Francis and Claire Paterson, who have filled Tifs recently vacated shoes with an aplomb and unswerving professionalism of which I know she would approve.
No thanks would be complete without special mention of Mari, whose constant and overwhelming support allows me to function as a vaguely sentient creature rather than a mass of quivering jelly. I would also like to thank Ingrid and Ian for much support when we needed it, and finally thanks to my in-laws, Maggy and Stewart, for help and assistance on occasions too numerous to mention.
This book took 108 days to write between December 22, 2009, and September 3, 2010. It was written on a Mac Pro using Pages software. Ive been Mac since 1995, when it was OS 7.9.2, and I have used Apple writing software on all my projects. During the writing I consumed thirty-two gallons of coffee, eighteen gallons of tea, and I walked 192 miles. The filing backed up to a depth of seven and a half inches, and I received 1,672 e-mails and sent 380. The average daytime temperature was 9.2 degrees Celsius and I burned 1.2 tons of logs in my wood burner. In that time I lost a faithful hound but gained a fourth daughter.
Jasper Fforde
September 2010
Also by Jasper Fforde
SHADES OF GREY
The Thursday Next Series
FIRST AMONG SEQUELS
SOMETHING ROTTEN
THE WELL OF LOST PLOTS
LOST IN A GOOD BOOK
THE EYRE AFFAIR
(No longer available)The Nursery Crimes Series
THE BIG OVER EASY
THE FOURTH BEAR
Also by Jasper Fforde
SHADES OF GREY
The Thursday Next Series
FIRST AMONG SEQUELS
SOMETHING ROTTEN
THE WELL OF LOST PLOTS
LOST IN A GOOD BOOK
THE EYRE AFFAIR
(No longer available) The Nursery Crimes Series
THE BIG OVER EASY
THE FOURTH BEAR
The BookWorld Remade
The remaking was one of those moments when one felt a part of literature and not just carried along within it. In less than ten minutes, the entire fabric of the BookWorld was radically altered. The old system was swept away, and everything was changed forever. But the group of people to whom it was ultimately beneficial remained gloriously unaware: the readers. To most of them, books were merely books. If only it were that simple....
Bradshaws BookWorld Companion (2nd edition)
Everyone can remember where they were when the BookWorld was remade. I was at home resting between readings, which is a polite euphemism for almost remaindered.
But I wasnt doing nothing. No, I was using the time to acquaint myself with EZ-Reads latest Laborsaving Narrative Devices, all designed to assist a first-person protagonist like me cope with the strains of a sixty-eight-setting five-book series at the speculative end of Fantasy.
I couldnt afford any of these devicesnot even Verb-Ease for troublesome irregularitybut that wasnt the point. It was the company of EZ-Reads regional salesman that I was interested in, a cheery Designated Love Interest named Whitby Jett.
We have a new line in foreshadowing, he said, passing me a small blue vial.
Does the bottle have to be in the shape of Lola Vavoom? I asked.
Its a marketing thing.
I opened the stopper and sniffed at it gingerly.
What do you think? he asked.
Whitby was a good-looking man described as a youthful forty. I didnt know it then, but he had a dark past, and despite our mutual attraction his earlier misdeeds could only end in one way: madness, recrimination and despair.
I prefer my foreshadowing a little less pungent, I said, carefully replacing the stopper. I was getting all sorts of vibes about you and a dark past.
I wish, replied Whitby sadly. His book had been deleted long ago, so he was one of the many thousands of characters who eked out a living in the BookWorld while they waited for a decent part to come along. But because of his minor DLI character status, he had never been given a backstory. Those without any sort of history often tried to promote it as something mysterious when it wasnt, but not Whitby, who was refreshingly pragmatic. Even having no backstory as my backstory would be something, he had once told me in a private moment, but the truth is this: My author couldnt be bothered to give me one.
I always appreciated honesty, even as personal as this. There werent many characters in the BookWorld who had been left unscathed by the often selfish demands of their creators. A clumsily written and unrealistic set of conflicting motivations can have a character in therapy for decadesperhaps forever.
Any work offers recently? I asked.
I was up for a minor walk-on in an Amis.
How did you do?
I read half a page and they asked me what I thought. I said I understood every word and so was rejected as being overqualified.
Im sorry to hear that.
