Jasper Fforde (born 11 January 1961) is a British science-fiction, fantasy, and detective mystery novelist, oftentimes all three at once.
He's the mind behind such offbeat series as Thursday Next, Nursery Crime, and Shades of Grey, and famous for his humorous style, both silly and highly intellectual, playing quite liberally with meta-fictional concepts (And for the puns. Tons and tons of puns).
Fforde is an aviation buff and enjoys flying, and before publishing his first book, The Eyre Affair, in 2001, he worked as a cameraman on such Hollywood productions as GoldenEye, Quills, and Entrapment.
In 2010, Fforde published his first offering for young adults with The Last Dragonslayer.
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The Thursday Next Series:
- The Eyre Affair (2001)
- Lost in a Good Book (2002)
- The Well of Lost Plots (2003)
- Something Rotten (2004)
- First Among Sequels (2007)
- One of our Thursdays is Missing (2011)
- The Woman Who Died a Lot (2012)
The Nursery Crime Series:
- The Big Over Easy (2005)
- The Fourth Bear (2006)
- The Last Great Tortoise Race (not yet released)
The Shades of Grey Series:
- Shades of Grey (2009) note
- Red Side Story (scheduled for February 6th, 2024)
The Last Dragonslayer Series:
- The Last Dragonslayer (2010)
- The Song of the Quarkbeast (2011)
- The Eye of Zoltar (2014)
- The Great Troll War (2021)
Standalone Novels:
- Early Riser (2018)
- The Constant Rabbit (2020)
Commonly Used Tropes
- Aliens in Cardiff: Has a tendency to write fantastical scenarios in lesser-known British cities, including Swindon in Thursday Next, Reading in Nursery Crime, and Rhayader, Wales renamed to East Carmine in Shades of Grey.
- Alternate History:
- The Thursday Next series starts in an alternate 1985 in which the Crimean War has lasted over a hundred years, Time Travel is possible, and pets from extinct animals born of LEGO Genetics are not only commonplace, they're considered pests. In addition, Wales has broken away from the Commonwealth to form a Socialist government, cheese imports are heavily regulated (and sold illegally), and literature is more popular than sports.
- In Early Riser the last Ice Age never ended, most of the population hibernates over winter because temperatures as low as -20C are common and mammoths, wooly rhinos and glypodonts still exist. On the other hand so do all the countries we're familiar with (although Wales is an independent nation (as in the Thursday Next series)) exist as does at least one, the Ottoman Empire, that doesn't anymore. So do many common foods and products like Snickers bars.
- Author Appeal: Fforde really seems to like the idea of extinct animals not being extinct, given that everything from migratory mammoths to pet dodos exist in Thursday Next, megafauna are commonplace in Early Riser (due to the ice age never ending) and the plot of The Last Dragonslayer involves the creation of a second dragon.
- Creator Thumbprint:
- Every chapter of Fforde's books begins with an Epigraph originating from an In-Universe Encyclopedia Exposita; Thursday Next and Early Riser have excerpts from pieces of In-unvierse literature (the former favoring biographies) Nursery Crime has excerpts of news articles, and Shades of Grey features snippets from the Rules.
- No less than three of his works feature a major Shout-Out to Jane Eyre; the book is central to the plot of The Eyre Affair, Edward and Jane are the names of the protagonists of Shades of Grey, and in Early Riser, the Technically Living Zombies that come about as a result of defective Morphenox care called "Edward" if they're male, and "Jane" if they're female.
- Crossover: Each of his works have elements that crop up in each other, with them all being in distinct settings. For instance:
- The original draft of The Big Over Easy predates the Thursday Next novels, so Fforde had almost the entire cast of that novel show up in the third book, providing a meta explanation for how that novel actually got made. The Fourth Bear mentions that the Rambosians were in conflict with Emperor Zhark, a side character in Thursday Next.
- Sommeworld from The Fourth Bear and Quarkbeasts from The Last Dragonslayer both started off as a single-line jokes in Thursday Next.
- Both Perpetulite and the Mildew from Shades of Grey are mentioned in Early Riser.
- Feghoot: He has several elaborate ones throughout his works; one in the second Nursery Crime book ends with a tongue-twister where the characters Break the Fourth Wall to call him out for putting so much effort into such a lame joke, while Early Riser has one involving Tom Jones that lasts through about a quarter of the novel.
- Genre Savvy: As most of Thursday Next's adventures take place inside the world of fiction, she is able to avoid trouble as she already knows how the stories end. Subverted in that, if she's not careful, she can change the outcome of the story (an important plot point in The Eyre Affair).
- Massive Multiplayer Crossover: As a member of Jurisfiction (the police force of BookWorld), Thursday fights crime alongside Miss Havisham, the Cheshire Cat, and Mrs. Tiggy-Winkle.
- Nursery Rhyme: The Nursery Crime series features DI Jack Spratt and DS Mary Mary, who are regularly involved in crimes involving characters from children's literature.
- Running Gag:
- Each of Fforde's books with a Table of Contents list a 13th Chapter that never actually exists in the book.
- Both Thursday Next and Early Riser feature Wales as having the tourist slogan "Not Always Raining".
- Starting with Early Riser, Fforde makes at least one reference to Rick Astley in each of his novels.
- Subverted Kids' Show: Characters from children's literature in both Thursday Next and Nursery Crime have elements of this; in the former, several Nursery and Fairy Tale characters unionize in an attempt to get new, better stories, and in Nursery Crime, you have Humpty Dumpty as a womanizing alcoholic, Jack the Giant-Killer as a cop, and Fantastic Racism against sapient animals such as the Big Bad Wolf and the Three Bears.
- There Are No Good Executives: All the employees of the Goliath Corporation in Thursday Next are evil to one degree or another. This also extends to Quang-Tech in Nursery Crime, and HiberTech in Early Riser.
- They Walk Among Us: The main plot in Something Rotten involves trying to find a fictional character that has managed to escape into the real world.
- Unconventional Formatting: The tables of contents in each of Fforde's books shows a 13th chapter; however, the actual chapters skip from 12 to 14.
- Write What You Know: Fforde is a native Welshman, and Wales crops up in most of his works; it's a socialist republic in Thursday Next, the setting for Early Riser and Shades of Grey (the latter in a post-apocalyptic state).
- Zeppelins from Another World: Both the Thursday Next series and The Dragonslayer Series feature lighter-than-air transport.
