{
  "export": {
    "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/1013",
    "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": "urth",
  "thread": {
    "id": 1013,
    "subject": "Fifth Head miscellaney",
    "messages": 1,
    "voices": 1,
    "first": "1998-07-20T00:05:28+00:00",
    "last": "1998-07-20T00:05:28+00:00"
  },
  "messages": [
    {
      "message_id": "<urth-v0017-0046@digest.urth.net>",
      "from": {
        "name": "mary whalen",
        "address": "marewhalen at yahoo.com"
      },
      "date": "1998-07-20T00:05:28+00:00",
      "subject": "(urth) Fifth Head miscellaney",
      "in_reply_to": null,
      "reply_link": null,
      "blocks": [
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "This is Sean Whalen (prion).\n\nI just wanted to put down a few minor miscellaneous points I have in\nmy mind about _The Fifth Head of Cerberus_.\n\nToday I saw a show about Neanderthals.  It seems that their\nflintworkers could make a blade that is the sharpest known to man, as\ncould the later humans.  The discusser said that it is even sharper\nthan a modern surgeon's scalpel.  Marsch talks about how flint can be\nchipped with little dexterity when he talks to RT speculating about\nhow he could make the implements he sells as Annese with his arthritic\nhands.  VRT probably used flint to cut out the first pages of Marsch's\ndiary, which are said in the story to have been cut out with an\ninstrument sharper than a scalpel.\n\nVRT may have bought the brass circumciser to use on himself, so that\nhe would not be discovered to be impersonating Marsch if his books\nwere found.  Did he ever get to use it?  I don't know if anyone in\nauthority ever saw him naked, and he asked not to be strip-searched by\nthe men who arrest him.\n\nIsn't it possible that VRT didn't kill Marsch, but that he was killed\nby the tire-tiger?  In the journal, written by VRT, it says that\nMarsch was attacked by the waiting tiger when he came down from the\ntree, and that he should have been mauled but was absurdly lucky, and\nwas only knocked back into a thorn bush.  It seems to me that the\ntiger actually killed Marsch, and that VRT wrote that Marsch survived\nso that he could take his place.  Otherwise, there's no reason to\ninclude this passage at all, as it seems ridiculous that Marsch could\nactually save himself if the tiger attacked as he came down the tree.\n\nAgain, I wonder if VRT actually killed the cat-girl or just wrote that\nso that he wouldn't have to write about her interactions with Marsch,\nwhich would have been very different from the interactions he had with\nher, and too difficult for him to make up.  When he begins to write in\nthe journal, he also talks about \"we\" a lot, apparently about him and\nthe mules, but perhaps not.\n\nI don't think that I believe Robert Borski's idea that RT is actually\nan abo himself.  It seems odd that his wife and son have green eyes\nwhen he doesn't.  VRT thinks he's a human, he says that what happens\nto his hands will keep him from his profession, implying that he had\ntool-using hands before.  He can operate the buttons that his wife\ncan't.\n\nAlso, I believe that there was some discussion about what VRT and\nMaitre believe about Jeannine's genetic relations when VRT says that\nshe is the daughter of \"shall we say an earlier 'version'\" of No. 5. \nIt seems possible that he meant a version as the parent of the Gene\nWolfe genome, rather than an earlier person in the line of clones. \nHowever, in jail VRT says that Jeannine is genetically Gene's\ndaughter.  At that time, remember, VRT didn't know that No. 5 knew he\nwas a clone, and was thus just being subtle.\n\nprion"
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
}