{
  "export": {
    "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/sflovers/82",
    "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": 82,
    "subject": "\"The Fifth Head of Cerberus\" (SPOILERS)",
    "messages": 2,
    "voices": 2,
    "first": "1990-06-13T21:40:15+00:00",
    "last": "1990-06-14T04:21:27+00:00"
  },
  "messages": [
    {
      "message_id": "<sflovers-v15-227-9@digest.sf-lovers>",
      "from": {
        "name": "Zorn of Zorna",
        "address": "hartman at cs.swarthmore.edu"
      },
      "date": "1990-06-13T21:40:15+00:00",
      "subject": "\"The Fifth Head of Cerberus\" (SPOILERS)",
      "in_reply_to": null,
      "reply_link": null,
      "blocks": [
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "I finally read Gene Wolfe's \"The Fifth Head of Cerberus\" a week or so\nago.  I vaguely remember there being a full-length novel version, but this\nwas a shorter version, in one of the Year's Best anthologies.  And I just\ndon't get it.  Or rather, I followed the surface story without too much\ntrouble, but when I got to the end I had a strong feeling that there was a\nlot going on that I was missing.  The story seemed to be very\nstraightforward in plot; as far as I could tell, it was mostly a mood\npiece.  It did a good job of characterization and depiction of this future\nalien society, but I couldn't help feeling that that wasn't all there was\nto it.  Can anyone help me out?\n   I couldn't even figure out if Veil's Hypothesis (I think that was what\nit was called) was supposed to be true, or exactly why the protagonist was\nimprisoned (there's an obvious reason for him to have been imprisoned\n(killing his father), but I thought there were implications that it WASN'T\nfor the obvious reason).\n   Hm.  Just realized that that story was what I was reminded of by the\nPrologue to _Stars in my Pocket Like Grains of Sand_ (which I'm reading\nnow).  Interesting similarities.\n   Anyway, I tend to have that feeling about most of Wolfe's stuff that\nI've read.  Haven't started on the Book of the New Sun (?) books yet, but\nthe stories of his that I've read (and _Free Live Free_) have often left me\nwondering what I'm missing. \n\nJed\nhartman at campus.swarthmore.edu\nhartman at swarthmr.bitnet"
        }
      ]
    },
    {
      "message_id": "<sflovers-v15-227-10@digest.sf-lovers>",
      "from": {
        "name": "Mike Godwin",
        "address": "mnemonic at walt.cc.utexas.edu"
      },
      "date": "1990-06-14T04:21:27+00:00",
      "subject": "Re: \"The Fifth Head of Cerberus\" (SPOILERS)",
      "in_reply_to": "<sflovers-v15-227-9@digest.sf-lovers>",
      "reply_link": "subject",
      "blocks": [
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "hartman at cs.swarthmore.edu (Zorn of Zorna) writes:"
        },
        {
          "kind": "quote",
          "depth": 1,
          "text": "  I finally read Gene Wolfe's \"The Fifth Head of Cerberus\" a week or so\nago.  I vaguely remember there being a full-length novel version, but this\nwas a shorter version, in one of the Year's Best anthologies.  And I just\ndon't get it.  Or rather, I followed the surface story without too much\ntrouble, but when I got to the end I had a strong feeling that there was a\nlot going on that I was missing.  The story seemed to be very\nstraightforward in plot; as far as I could tell, it was mostly a mood\npiece.  It did a good job of characterization and depiction of this future\nalien society, but I couldn't help feeling that that wasn't all there was\nto it.  Can anyone help me out?\n\n  I couldn't even figure out if Veil's Hypothesis (I think that was what\nit was called) was supposed to be true, or exactly why the protagonist was\nimprisoned (there's an obvious reason for him to have been imprisoned\n(killing his father), but I thought there were implications that it WASN'T\nfor the obvious reason)."
        },
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "Well, since Wolfe was trying to create a certain amount of ambiguity in his\nstory, you should be warned that there's no real \"answer\" to many of your\nquestions. Nevertheless, you'd probably enjoy the \"novel\" FIFTH HEAD OF\nCERBERUS, which is actually the story you read followed by two related\nstories. The book will give you a lot of background on the Hypothesis and\nother questions you may have about Wolfe's fictional society.\n\nWolfe can be troubling to those who read more traditional SF, since he\nfeels no great need to wrap up his works with tidy solutions.  Of course,\nthis is part of his strength as a writer, since life itself has no great\nfondness for neat solutions.\n\nMike Godwin\nUT Law School"
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
}