{
  "export": {
    "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/1177",
    "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": 1177,
    "subject": "Sev's name",
    "messages": 2,
    "voices": 2,
    "first": "1998-10-15T08:49:50+00:00",
    "last": "1998-10-15T09:46:38+00:00"
  },
  "messages": [
    {
      "message_id": "<urth-v0020-0007@digest.urth.net>",
      "from": {
        "name": "Alice Turner",
        "address": "al at interport.net"
      },
      "date": "1998-10-15T08:49:50+00:00",
      "subject": "(urth) Sev's name",
      "in_reply_to": null,
      "reply_link": null,
      "blocks": [
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "From mantis"
        },
        {
          "kind": "quote",
          "depth": 1,
          "text": "The intended point of my post, which I hesitate to belabor in sightof your\nevident happiness, was to say, well yes, \"Severian\" is in theOED, but\nhow much can you do with the information given there?"
        },
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "Oh, it does make me happy. What can I do with it? Hmm. Well, the first thing\nI can say with confidence is that is that, in a long book where virtually\n100 percent of the human characters are named after either Christian saints\nor Roman pagans, to name the hero after a heretic, or indeed an entire sect\nof heretics, adds a note of playful cynicism. Wolfe has said (to Ratty, as I\nrecall), Well, I am a Christian Catholic, but not the sort you think. (I\nparaphrase.) Well, yeah!! Dr. Talos's play, which is written along\nManicheaen lines, might merit another reading with Sev's name in mind.\n\nSimple reading: I am now going to write a sort of Christian fable, a Rapture\nand Rebirth imagining  retold as sword-and-sorcery adventure with some Torah\nand pagan mythology tossed in; obviously this is not scripture, so I will\nmake it clear that I am writing heresy. Of a sort.\n\n-alga-"
        }
      ]
    },
    {
      "message_id": "<urth-v0020-0009@digest.urth.net>",
      "from": {
        "name": "Alex David Groce",
        "address": "adgroce at eos.ncsu.edu"
      },
      "date": "1998-10-15T09:46:38+00:00",
      "subject": "Re: (urth) Sev's name",
      "in_reply_to": "<urth-v0020-0007@digest.urth.net>",
      "reply_link": "subject",
      "blocks": [
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "I think it is suggestive, although I'm not sure it's as cynical as might\nappear.  As to Wolfe's 'not the sort you think' comment, he also said something\nsimilar in an old interview with Larry McCaffrey (don't have it with me...)\nalthough there (and here) it looked like the implication was more that most\npeople have no idea what being a Roman Catholic means (including most\nCatholics).  I'm pretty sure Wolfe wouldn't consider himself a heretic (not\nthat most heretics would...) and would, I suspect, fall into church line on\ndefined doctrinal points (which leaves a lot of room for oddness--after all, I\ndoubt the Church has made a proclamation one way or the other about the idea\nthe Greek gods were real beings of some kind, for which Wolfe has expressed\nsympathy in the past).  He's orthodox enough to be a huge Chesterton fan,\nanyway...  And I would say that despite some terminological and mythological\nborrowings, the BOTNS is philosophically quite anti-Manichean.  The Pancreator\nis fairly clearly fills both the 'God' and 'Creator' slots, and rather than\ndespising the physical as inferior or absolutely corrupt, good old earthy\nSeverian ends up taking off his boots because it's ALL Holy Ground.  :)\n\n\tJust my two cents--as to the whole mess of genealogical speculations I\ncame back from break to find, I think it's fine to make them, but that most of\nthem are fairly indefensible except as wild speculation unlikely to have been\nauthorial intent or even the way most people would read things after a great\ndeal of study (unlike the Dorcas, etc. hypothesis...)"
        },
        {
          "kind": "quote",
          "depth": 1,
          "text": "On Oct 15,  8:49am, Alice Turner wrote:\nSubject: (urth) Sev's name\nFrom mantis"
        },
        {
          "kind": "quote",
          "depth": 2,
          "text": "The intended point of my post, which I hesitate to belabor in sightof your\nevident happiness, was to say, well yes, \"Severian\" is in theOED, but\nhow much can you do with the information given there?"
        },
        {
          "kind": "quote",
          "depth": 1,
          "text": "Oh, it does make me happy. What can I do with it? Hmm. Well, the first thing\nI can say with confidence is that is that, in a long book where virtually\n100 percent of the human characters are named after either Christian saints\nor Roman pagans, to name the hero after a heretic, or indeed an entire sect\nof heretics, adds a note of playful cynicism. Wolfe has said (to Ratty, as I\nrecall), Well, I am a Christian Catholic, but not the sort you think. (I\nparaphrase.) Well, yeah!! Dr. Talos's play, which is written along\nManicheaen lines, might merit another reading with Sev's name in mind.\n\nSimple reading: I am now going to write a sort of Christian fable, a Rapture\nand Rebirth imagining  retold as sword-and-sorcery adventure with some Torah\nand pagan mythology tossed in; obviously this is not scripture, so I will\nmake it clear that I am writing heresy. Of a sort.\n\n-alga-"
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
}