{
  "export": {
    "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/sflovers/104",
    "note": "Exported from an unofficial mirror of a public mailing list. Copyright in each message remains with the person who wrote it.  Email addresses are obscured as `user at host`, the form the original archive published. This file was rebuilt from parsed fields rather than retained headers, so it is faithful in content but not byte-exact.",
    "addresses": "obscured as 'user at host'"
  },
  "archive": "sflovers",
  "thread": {
    "id": 104,
    "subject": "Time and the New Sun",
    "messages": 2,
    "voices": 2,
    "first": "1992-10-07T03:08:00+00:00",
    "last": "1992-10-07T17:53:52+00:00"
  },
  "messages": [
    {
      "message_id": "<sflovers-v17-521-12@digest.sf-lovers>",
      "from": {
        "name": "Dani Zweig",
        "address": "dani at netcom.com"
      },
      "date": "1992-10-07T03:08:00+00:00",
      "subject": "Time and the New Sun",
      "in_reply_to": null,
      "reply_link": null,
      "blocks": [
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "It's harder than it seems at first glance to decide on the time scale of\nGene Wolfe's \"New Sun\" books.  Most of the changes that suggest millions of\nyears - resource depletion, evolution of new species, even the\nextinguishing of Earth's fires, could have been achieved in far less time\nthrough technological intervention.\n\nTrying a simpler question, as a means of getting a handle on the harder\none, how much time passed between Ymar's day and Severian's?  The clues\nconflict.  Ymar lived in the first days of the dying of the sun, in the\nlast days of Earth's diastrophism, and in the last days of Earth's\ninterstellar empire.  (It may have even been in his day that the Autarchy\nlost most of Earth outside South America.)  On the other hand, he lived in\na world little different from Severian's, where even the small villages\nwere the same.  We also note that it was reasonable to expect a coin from\nYmar's time to survive, badly corroded, in Severian's: there is reason to\nsuspect that common words such as 'copper', 'stone', 'wood', often refer to\nfar more durable materials than we associate with them.\n\nDani Zweig"
        }
      ]
    },
    {
      "message_id": "<sflovers-v17-522-15@digest.sf-lovers>",
      "from": {
        "name": "Matt Austern",
        "address": "matt at physics2.berkeley.edu"
      },
      "date": "1992-10-07T17:53:52+00:00",
      "subject": "Re: Time and the New Sun",
      "in_reply_to": "<sflovers-v17-521-12@digest.sf-lovers>",
      "reply_link": "subject",
      "blocks": [
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "dani at netcom.com (Dani Zweig) writes:"
        },
        {
          "kind": "quote",
          "depth": 1,
          "text": "Trying a simpler question, as a means of getting a handle on the harder\none, how much time passed between Ymar's day and Severian's?  The clues\nconflict.  Ymar lived in the first days of the dying of the sun, in the\nlast days of Earth's diastrophism, and in the last days of Earth's\ninterstellar empire.  (It may have even been in his day that the Autarchy\nlost most of Earth outside South America.)  On the other hand, he lived\nin a world little different from Severian's, where even the small\nvillages were the same."
        },
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "There's another clue worth paying attention to: the way that Ymar is\nremembered in Severian's day.  Severian read one story about Ymar, and felt\nthat he was reading about a person infinitely removed from the world he\nlived in, about whom it was possible to know almost nothing.  The\nimpression I got is that almost no records about Ymar, or writings of his,\nhad survived, only a few fragments like the one Severian read.\n\nThe way that Ymar was remembered seemed more similar to the way that we\nremember Alexander the Great than to the way that we remember Napolean.\n\nMatthew Austern\n(510) 644-2618 \naustern at lbl.bitnet"
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
}