{
  "export": {
    "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/132",
    "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": 132,
    "subject": "Mud for AEther",
    "messages": 1,
    "voices": 1,
    "first": "1997-08-06T16:49:00+00:00",
    "last": "1997-08-06T16:49:00+00:00"
  },
  "messages": [
    {
      "message_id": "<urth-v0003-0203@digest.urth.net>",
      "from": {
        "name": "m.driussi",
        "address": "m.driussi at genie.com"
      },
      "date": "1997-08-06T16:49:00+00:00",
      "subject": "(urth) Mud for AEther",
      "in_reply_to": null,
      "reply_link": null,
      "blocks": [
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "alga,\n\nBack to the story \"Tracking Song.\"  Re: what is humanity; as you\nglancingly noted, there are clues that the Great Sleighers are not\nmere humans such as ourselves at all, rather they are idealized humans,\nor \"angels\" or hierodules of TBOTNS.  People of aether.  If this is\ntrue, then Mantru really is the last of the old humans (people of\nclay), taking on the role of the Autarch in the play \"Eschatology and\nGenesis,\" trying to hold back the arrival of the new day or, failing\nthat, to subvert it for his own goals, not the least of which is the\ndifficult-to-condemn survival of his (our) species.  And Cutthroat is\nan avatar of the Green Man, pointing towards a New Jerusalem where\nsustenance will not require bloodshed.\n\n(Whoops, I botched the punning in the last message.  White ration\ncubes as both \"bouillon,\" treasure of the cupboard, and \"bullion,\"\ntreasures of the underworld.  And communion, too.)\n\nThe terraforming of the ice age world is a nice and simple analogy for\nthe whole white fountain/new sun process.  Since Wolfe is so fond of\nstarships with reflective sails and starships that sail on water as\nwell (FIFTH HEAD, etc.), I'd guess that the mirror in geostationary\norbit is made up of sails from the ship now crawling across the ice.\n\nStill, circumnavigation of a sphere in twenty days at a rate of\nwalking speed?  Hmmm.  Well, let's say 5 mph, 24 hours a day . . .\nthat's only 120 miles/day.  Try 10 mph.  That only doubles it to 240\nmiles per day, times 20 days is only 4,800 miles circumference, which\nimplies a world with a diameter of 1,529 miles . . . smaller than\nLuna.  Oh, I don't know . . . maybe they go really fast at night?\n\n(Hey, speaking of miles vs. kilometers, Peter Wright and I have this\ndifference of interpretation for the next story, \"The Toy Theater,\"\nwhich largely boils down to the unanswerable question of which\nmeasuring system is being used!  Since I favor the \"metric\" answer,\nI'm happy to note the other stories in the collection that use the\nmetric system.)\n\n(Aside from TBOTNS this is looking more and more like John Crowley's\nTHE DEEP crossed with ENGINE SUMMER with sprinkles of BEASTS; springing\nfrom a similar river, I suppose, since I don't know that Wolfe has\nread any John Crowley aside from LITTLE, BIG, which he heartily\nendorsed.)\n\nSo it might really be the funeral of humankind (especially with death\nof Mantru) and the dawn of a new day wherein one or more of the beastman\ngroups will fill the vacuum and assume the role of \"humankind.\"\n\n=mantis="
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
}