The Eyre Affair_ A Novel - Jasper Fforde [445]
“Good. Bring The Scarlet Letter back on-line.”
We watched nervously as the storm slowly subsided. It had littered the Hemingway canon with words and ideas, but nothing violent enough to embed them and change the narrative. As likely as not the residents of the novels would just pick them up and sell them to traveling scrap merchants. But the WordStorm wasn’t quite finished with us yet. After brushing past the preface to For Whom the Bell Tolls, the storm suddenly sped up and, in its last dying throes, embedded a Bride Shot at the Altar plot device right at the end of Blackmore’s Lorna Doone, where it remains to this day. Aside from that minor flexation, no real harm was done by the WordStorm. The senator berated me for a good ten minutes and filed a report on my behavior the following day, which was summarily rejected by the other members of the Jurisfiction oversight committee.
I left the Cat and Bradshaw to log the damage reports and thanked Dr. Howard and his staff for their slavish attention. I decided to walk back home, across the storycode engine floor and down the empty corridors of the Great Library to the Well of Lost Plots and back to bed. I was feeling quite good about myself. I had run a team of highly skilled technicians and saved The Scarlet Letter from almost certain devastation. It would be one of my easier tasks as Bellman, but I didn’t know that yet. The evening had gone well. Landen would have been proud of me.
Credits
Falstaff, the three witches, Banquo’s ghost, Beatrice and Benedict—all kindly supplied by Shakespeare (William) Inc.
Our thanks to Mr. Heathcliff for graciously agreeing to appear in this novel.
Uriah Heep kindly loaned by Wickfield & Heep, attorneys-at-law.
My thanks to ScarletBea, Yan, Ben, Carla, Jon, Magda, AllAmericanCutie and Dave at the Fforde Fforum for their nominations in the Bookie Awards.
Hedgepig research, Anna Karenina footnoterphone gossip and “dodo egg” sarcasm furnished by Mari Roberts.
Solomon’s Judgments © The Council of Genres, 1986.
“Chocolate orange” joke used with the kind permission of John Birmingham.
UltraWord—the Ultimate Reading Experience™ remains a trademark of Text Grand Central.
Bookie category Best Dead Person in Fiction courtesy of C. J. Avery.
Fictionaut wordsmithed by Jon Brierley.
Evilness consultant: Ernst Blofeld.
Mrs. Bradshaw’s gowns by Coco Chanel.
Aornis little-sister idea courtesy of Rosie Fforde.
Our grateful thanks to the Great Panjandrum for help and guidance in the making of this novel.
No unicorns were written expressly for this book, and no animals or Yahoos (other than grammasites) were harmed in its construction.
This novel was written in BOOK V8.3 and was sequenced using an Mk XXIV ImaginoTransferenceDevice. Peggy Malone was the imaginator. Plot Devices and Inciting Incidents supplied by Billy Budd’s Bargain Basement and the WOLP Plot Salvage and Recycling Corporation. Generics supplied and trained by St. Tabularasa’s. Holes were filled by apprentices at the Holesmiths’ Guild, and echolocation and grammatization were undertaken by Outland contractors at Hodder and Viking.
The “galactic cleansing” policy undertaken by Emperor Zhark is a personal vision of the emperor’s, and its inclusion in this work does not constitute tacit approval by the author or the publisher for any such projects, howsoever undertaken. Warning: The author may have eaten nuts while writing this book.
Made wholly on location within the Well of Lost Plots.
A Fforde/Hodder/Viking production. All rights reserved.
PERMISSIONS
Extract from Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh (copyright © Evelyn Waugh, 1945) by permission of Peters, Fraser and Dunlop on behalf of the Evelyn Waugh Trust and the Estate of Laura Waugh.
Reference to the Just So Stories by Rudyard Kipling (copyright © The National Trust for Places of Historic Interest or Natural Beauty) by kind permission of A. P. Watt Ltd.
References to Shadow the Sheepdog by Enid Blyton by kind permission of Enid Blyton Limited and with thanks to Chorion plc.
Frederick Warne & Co. is the