Science & Technology: Greetings from Swindon; Jasper Fforde's fictional heroine, Thursday Next, battles giant corporations, aliens and genetically modified beasts, using a wind-up computer. Charles Arthur met her creator to find out why she will never enter the electronic age.(Features) From: The Independent (London, England) | Date: July 21, 2004| Author: | COPYRIGHT 2004 Independent Newspapers (UK) Ltd. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan.  All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group.Copyright information

Byline: Charles Arthur

Jasper Fforde's books have got everything. Well, almost everything. The world of his heroine, the civil servant and champion croquet player Thursday Next, includes mammoths, dodos and Neanderthals recreated by genetic engineering, plasma rifles, and fictional characters who come alive, and duel with real characters, who take refuge in fiction. His upcoming fourth book, Something Rotten, also includes a minotaur bedevilled by slapstick, the ruthless planet-destroying tyrant Zhark (whose unexpected arrival in a spaceship intervenes rather unfortunately in ...