History Literature / EarlyRiser

* LaserGuidedKarma: [[spoiler: Don Hector made a Morphenox with no side effects, but the company got too much money off Nightwalkers, so they decided to murder him and cover it all up while making a second, more risky batch instead. Then the Nightwalkers are woken up and nearly everyone abandons Morphenox entirely, and they're left futilely trying to replicate Hector's version after having destroyed all evidence of it.]]

* TheNeedsOfTheMany: Deconstructed. This is [=HiberTech=]'s rationale for everything that they do, creating "the greatest good" for the "greatest majority". [[spoiler:Ergo, poisoning, enslaving, and murdering hundreds if not thousands of people by turning them into Nightwalkers is okay because the majority will benefit from having an oppressed underclass to do labor and farm organs from.]] In their opinion, the convenience of the many outweighs the basic human rights of the few: as long as you can run the numbers, any amount of immorality is acceptable.

* ALighterShadeOfGrey: [[spoiler:While Toccata is the good half of a SplitPersonality, the other is an out and out sadist torturer, so it comes out to her being "barely tolerable" at best. Jonesy casually mentions that she beat her into a concussion for a week for some slight or other.]]

* GoodAllAlong: [[spoiler:The Gronk might be a bit more simplistic than most, but it turns out she only goes after people who are truly "unworthy": her murderous father, Lucky Ned, Hooke, and then Aurora. Charlie spends most of the book worried that the Gronk will come for them due to their guilt over causing Logan's death, but she helps them instead, understanding that their guilt is misplaced.]]

** Bondsmen, and in particular Jim Treacle the Bondsman, are active LoanSharks using the Winter to squeeze every last euro out of the desperate.

* DarkSecret: HiberTech is willing to murder and steal to cover up a very valuable secret: [[spoiler:that Nightwalkers are in fact [[UndeathIsCheap curable]], and always have been. Since this would make "parting them out" murder and "redeploying" slavery, they've gone to great lengths to hide the cure and get rid of anyone who knows about it.]]

* ChekhovsSkill: Charlie's exceptional memory, particularly the ability to remember a random string of words.

* DreamWalker: [[spoiler: The Gronk]]

%%* OnlyInItForTheMoney:
%%** [=HiberTech=]
%%** Bondsmen, and in particular Jim Treacle the Bondsman.

%%* SafelySecludedScienceCenter:

%%* SizableSnowflakes: Snowflakes the size of "dinner plates" are described as a blizzard rolls in.

* SplitPersonalityMerge: Discussed -- this is what Charlie hopes to Invoke in order to [[spoiler: distract or defuse Aurora]] by forcing her to confront [[spoiler: all her good instincts that splintered into the Toccata personality]].
%%* TalkingInYourDreams:

** Famous works of theater like Theatre/RomeoAndJuliet and Theatre/{{Agamemnon}} have slightly altered plots that reflect the fact that humans hibernate during the winter. Both the Zeffirelli's [[Film/RomeoAndJuliet1968 film adaptation]] and [[Creator/BazLuhrmann Baz Luhrmann's]] [[Film/WilliamShakespearesRomeoAndJuliet version]] of Romeo and Juliet are mentioned, in the context of how the respective directors handle Romeo's awakening in Spring (expecting to see Juliet beside him but finding the desiccated corpse of his beloved instead).

* TheAllConcealingI: The novel is written from protagonist Charlie's point of view. This allows author Fforde to keep viewers in the dark about [[spoiler: Charlie's facial deformity]] for the first few chapters, and about Charlie's gender for the rest of the novel due to the GenderNeutralWriting.

* AmbiguousGender: Charlie is [[GenderNeutralWriting never written with gendered pronouns]], and as the [[TheAllConcealingI narrator]] they never give an indication as to their gender. The one time another character addresses Charlie in the third person, it's Toccata shouting "what do you want me to do about ''them''?"

* GenderNeutralWriting: Charlie is never written with gendered pronouns. The [[TheAllConcealingI first person perspective]] of the novel makes it easy for Fforde to get away with putting in minimal description of Charlie, at least until other characters remark on their appearance.

** The story takes place in an alternate version of the modern world, where the Ice Age still continues and the human population hibernates through winter. Humans bulk up by gorging on fatty foods before they hibernate, and grow a hairy "winter coat" to survive the extreme cold.

** [[spoiler: Don Hector]] helped to develop the technology, and was able to [[spoiler: booby-trap all his dreams so that the recordings [=HiberTech=] made were functionally worthless for extracting information]].

---> '--when I was two my parents sold the option on my firstborn to Partwood Associates to pay off their gambling debts. The option was resold several times before being packaged with other subprime child options and eventually on to Jim Treacle as part of a collateralised child obligation. My genetic sleep disorder means I possess a genome in which [=HiberTech=] have a great deal of interest. I've chosen not to license my genetic rights, and my unborn should have that right, too. I don't want them to go to [=HiberTech=] to be some kind of -- I don't know -- lab rat.'
---> 'How much is the firstborn child option worth?'
---> 'Treacle has told [=HiberTech=] he wants two million euros at my eighteenth.'
---> 'You'll get half. That's the deal.'
---> 'It's not about the money, and they can't force me to have children -- but I think I want to, and if I do, well, I want them to be born unencumbered by legalities.'
---> 'Okay, but you've got a buy-back clause. Legally, there's ''always'' a buy-back clause.'
---> '''Precisely'', but it was pegged a fifty thousand by the courts and I barely have a grand.'
---> 'So if you lose the wager,' I said slowly, 'you lose the genetic rights to two children, Treacle and you make a fortune, -- but [=HiberTech=] obtains legal access to a couple of kids with a potentially valuable genome?'
---> 'Pretty much. But if I ''win'' the wager," she added, 'I get no money but retain my children's rights.'

---> 'I'd sooner marry Agent Hooke, but it's complicated: my mum borrowed lavishly from Treacle to bag a rich widower from Sector Fifteen. That didn't work out, so Treacle transferred the loan to my hand in marriage. Not sure how ''that'' happened. Anyway, we're trying to spin out the Hard No for as long as possible, otherwise it's a loan default and he can take my mum's house.'

* MammothsMeanIceAge: Ice age megafauna like mammoths, glyptodonts, giant tree sloths, and saber-tooth tigers never died out because the last ice age never ended. (Though the saber-tooth tigers are possibly extinct due to conflict with human settlements -- it's mentioned that the fifth-to-last saber tooth tiger was hit by a bus. The remains are on view in Talgarth's museum.)

** "Childbearing Evasion" is a crime. Paying "offsets" for partial custody of a child in a pooled parentage station can reduce a sentence to "childbearing avoidance," which isn't quite a crime so much as a misdemeanor.

--> 'No sir. I'm a... surrogacy that turned out wrong.'
--> 'On account of your head?"
--> 'Yes, on account of my head. I was transferred to St. Granata's with half the insurance payout. The rest went to my bios as compensation.'
--> 'Worthing is an insurance write-off,' said Mother Fallopia, 'and one that is still paying off our kindness.'

* RecurringDreams: The viral dreams affecting sleepers at the ''Sarah Siddons'' all involve boulders, blue Buicks, a belligerent Mrs. Nesbit (of Mrs. Nesbit's Tea House), and hands that will try to attack the dreamer. Turns out this trope is [[spoiler: Invoked by [=HiberTech=], who are broadcasting a recording of Don Hector's last dream into the minds of the ''Sarah Siddons'' residents.]] The repetition of the dream, night after night, causes the sleepers to become [[MadDreamer Mad Dreamers]].

%%* SharedDream:

%%* YourWorstNightmare:

* CrazyPeoplePlayChess: Aurora and Toccata

%%* RepressiveButEfficient: The government's tight control of both schooling and technical progress makes it so that anyone with a high school diploma has the necessary training to run any job designated a "skill zero" position - from a fast food restaurant manager to a filing clerk.

%%* ChosenConceptionPartner:
%%* ClapYourHandsIfYouBelieve: [[spoiler: The [=WinterVolk=]are made real by belief in their existence. Tall tales get repeated and eventually become true.]]
%%* CrapsackWorld:
%%* CrazyPeoplePlayChess: Aurora and Toccata

%%* DreamWalker:

%%* DreamingOfThingsToCome: Invoked

%%* ClapYourHandsIfYouBelieve:

* IncongruouslyDressedZombie: Some of the Nightwalkers show up wearing strange clothes, or [[NakedPeopleAreFunny nothing at all]]. Eddie Tangiers was naked when he suffered neural collapse in his sleep, so when he's discovered he's both totally nude and "displaying a tumescence of considerable size and rigidity." Creator/CarmenMiranda, who in this AlternateHistory did not die in 1955, shows up as an aged woman in a ballgown and a fruit hat. [[spoiler: Carmen keeps the fruit hat even after she's been cleaned up and put in a pair of standard coveralls by the Campaign for [=RealSleep=] ]].

%%* SizableSnowflakes:

* ThemeNaming: The Sisters of Perpetual Gestation all take on monastic names relating to fertility, genitalia, and parturition. Mother Fallopia runs the pool where protagonist Charlie was raised, and other sisters onsite include Sister Contractia and Sister Fertilia. There's also Sister Vulvolia in Sector fifty-one.

* ZombieAdvocate: If any citizen holds the belief that Nightwalkers are anything more than the brain-dead, cannibalistic husks of the people they use to be, they're not stupid enough to publicize the fact. But there are those who risk execution to "harbor" their loved ones after they turn, hiding the Nightwalkers away and keeping them fed on illegally obtained foodstuffs. [[spoiler: The Campaign for [=RealSleep=] is full of individuals who go out of their way to protect and rehabilitate Nightwalkers, including Jack Logan, Bronwyn "Jonesy" Jones, Toccata, "Hugo Foulnap"/ "Danny Pockets", and eventually Charlie. Josh-the-secretary-from-[=HiberTech=] also defects to their side, bringing a Nightwalker named Wendy with him.]]

* EerieArcticResearchStation: Zig-Zagged -- Sector 12 isn't in the Antarctic, it's in Wales. But the encroaching ice sheets from the north result in regular blizzards and -40 degree temperatures that make the land little better than the arctic in winter time. [=HiberTech=]'s research facilities and manufacturing plant are situated in Sector 12.

A sci-fi/ fantasy/ crime/ satirical comedy AlternateHistory novel by Creator/JasperFforde, ''Early Riser'' is set in a world where the last ice age never ended and the human population hibernates to survive. During the bitterly cold eight-week-long "month" of Standard Winter, the world is a snow-draped landscape of desolate loneliness, devoid of activity as everyone sleeps away the winter months in a dreamless haze courtesy of the drug [[ChemicalMessiah Morphenox]].

* DifferentWorldDifferentMovies: Famous works of theater like Theatre/RomeoAndJuliet and Theatre/{{Agamemnon}} have slightly altered plots that reflect the fact that humans hibernate during the winter. Both the Zeffirelli's [[Film/RomeoAndJuliet1968 film adaptation]] and [[Creator/BazLuhrmann Baz Luhrmann's]] [[Film/WilliamShakespearesRomeoAndJuliet version]] of Romeo and Juliet are mentioned, in the context of how the respective directors handle Romeo's awakening in Spring (expecting to see Juliet beside him but finding the desiccated corpse of his beloved instead).

* DreamingOfTimesGoneBy: Invoked -- part of the viral dream infesting the ''Sarah Siddons'' involves the dreamer dreaming that they've become Don Hector (the inventor of Morphenox) sitting on a pile of boulders at the base of a huge oak tree. As Charlier discovers, this isn't just a dream [[spoiler: but an actual memory of Don Hector's that became a dream-trap for anyone trying to explore Don Hector's recorded dreams. It's those recorded dreams/memories that [=HiberTech=] is playing back, projecting them into the minds of the sleepers at the ''Sarah Siddons''.]]
* EerieArcticResearchStation: Zig-Zagged - Sector 12 isn't in the Antarctic, it's in Wales. But the encroaching ice sheets from the north result in regular blizzards and -40 degree temperatures that make the land little better than the arctic in winter time. [=HiberTech=]'s research facilities and manufacturing plant are situated in Sector 12.

* ThemeNaming: The Sisters of Perpetual Gestation all take on monastic names relating to fertility, genitalia, and parturition. Mother Fallopia runs the pool where protagonist Charlie was raised, and other nuns onsite include Sister Contractia and Sister Fertilia.

* TheSocialDarwinist: The majority of the population would prefer to see Morphenox (the drug that increases one's chance of surviving hibernation by turning off the ability to dream) made available to everyone once [=HiberTech=]'s infrastructure has the capacity to produce enough for every man, woman, and child. But there are also those who espouse the belief that hibernation weeds out those who are unfit to survive, and call for Morphenox's distribution to be purposefully restricted ''even'' when there's enough to go around. The [[EncyclopediaExposita chapter header]] for "Over the Hump" provides one such example:

* SplitPersonality: [[spoiler: Aurora Toccata was originally the head of [=HiberTech's=] security and their most effective dream interrogator. She inflicted countless nightmares hundreds (if not thousands) of sleepers in order to get information out of them, and eventually the cruelty of her actions]] caused her mind to fracture into the distinct personalities of [[spoiler: Aurora, chief of [=HiberTech=] security, and Toccata, Chief of Sector 12's Winter Consul]].

* TeenPregnancy: Discussed as one method to stem the "wastage" that happens every year when young children and able-bodied adults die during hibernation. One character mentions that this would mean redefining who counts as a "child," as pregnancies are frowned upon until women turn 18. Even the Villains (who have no compulsion against kidnap, murder, and theft) look down on teen pregnancy, with the outlaw Lady Farnesworth quoted saying "one does not approve of child with child."

* PublicExecution: "Frigicution" is a form of execution where the condemned is chained up in a town square to freeze to death. Upon waking up from an accidental hibernation, Charlie sees that a criminal has been executed in just such a manner (for smuggling drugs out of [=HiberTech=]) while they were sleeping. The punishment is still widely employed throughout Wales (and possibly the rest of the Northern Federation), as the [[EncyclopediaExposita chapter header]] for "The Wincarnis" reads:

%%* RepressiveButEfficient: The government's tight control of both schooling and technical progress makes it so that anyone with a high school diploma has received the necessary training to run any job designated a "skill zero" position - from a fast food restaurant manager to a filing clerk.

* SkeletonKey: When Charlie becomes an official Novice Consul, they receive an "omnikey," which will allow them to open ''any'' lock on ''any'' door, in any Dormitoria or building. Locking hardware was standardized some time in the 1930's to allow for the production of just such a type of universal key, so anything older was "grandfathered in." Of course, when Charlie finds a mysterious [[spoiler: steamer trunk on the 9th floor of the ''Sarah Siddons'']] it has an old-style lock, rendering the omnikey useless.
* SmartPeoplePlayChess: Aurora and Toccata are playing a long-distance game of chess, and are both invested in obscure strategies that they hope will pay off and allow them to outmaneuver the other. Because they never seem to run into each other, they have to relay their moves through the various agents who act as go-betweens for [=HiberTech=] and the Winter Consul office.

* PublicExecution: "Frigicution" is a form of execution where the condemned is chained up in a town square to freeze to death. Upon waking up from an accidental hibernation, Charlie sees that a criminal has been executed in just such a manner (for smuggling drugs out of [=HiberTech=]) while they were sleeping. The punishment is still widely employed throughout Wales (and possibly the rest of the Norther Federation), as the [[EncyclopediaExposita chapter header]] for "The Wincarnis" reads:

* ParentalAbandonment: Charlie's parents hired a surrogate to carry Charlie to term, but dumped Charlie in a child rearing pool due to [[spoiler: Charlie's facial deformity]]. ''That'' pool then traded Charlie to the St Granata's Pooled Parentage Station, hoping for an insurance write-off because Charlie wasn't expected to survive the first Winter.