{
  "export": {
    "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/1329",
    "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": 1329,
    "subject": "Digesting urth",
    "messages": 1,
    "voices": 1,
    "first": "1999-01-16T19:20:00+00:00",
    "last": "1999-01-16T19:20:00+00:00"
  },
  "messages": [
    {
      "message_id": "<urth-v0022-0094@digest.urth.net>",
      "from": {
        "name": "m.driussi",
        "address": "m.driussi at genie.com"
      },
      "date": "1999-01-16T19:20:00+00:00",
      "subject": "(urth) Digesting urth",
      "in_reply_to": null,
      "reply_link": null,
      "blocks": [
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "Uh-oh, the Log Squad is on to us!\n\nAn ultraquick note to bring others up to speed on THE BLACK GRAIL.\n\nThis is a book firmly in the tradition of THE DYING EARTH.  It was\npublished in 1986, but is really an expansion of an earlier novel,\nSORCERER'S WORLD (published 1970).\n\nOf particular interest to me--well, as you all know, I've been\namassing datapoints hither and yon, trying to create a hard science\nreading of Severian's narrative (or convince anyone to go along with\nit).  How I have bludgeoned you with tables and charts, energy flows,\nUrth circuitry, and what not!\n\nHere in THE BLACK GRAIL, at last, I have found somebody who\nunderstands--yet he understood in 1986!  So by bumping my way through\nthe thorny hedge maze, I have finally managed to catch up with him,\nin more ways than one.\n\nLook: THE BLACK GRAIL lays out an Urth-type scenario (dying sun,\nterraformed Earth, remnants of supertek sivilizations, quasi-medieval\nsocieties, etc.), but the big scale mechanics are all laid out for\nthe reader to grasp immediately.  Here are the circuits, here are the\nenergy flows, this is why they are doing it, and here are some other\nneat astereoengineering stunts not used on Urth.  In a sense this\nmeans that Mystery and Magic have been stripped away, but I don't\nknow--it is neat to see a different approach to some of the same\nStapledonian themes and issues.\n\nStyle-wise, THE BLACK GRAIL strikes me as more like Moorcock than\nlike either Wolfe or Vance (this is fine--I like Moorcock).  But\nthere is a lot of Vancean stuff going on (easy tracking THE DYING\nEARTH and THE DEMON PRINCES, for example).  It is fun, it is a romp,\nit is a hoot.\n\n<A-ooo-gah!  A-ooo-gah!>\n\n\"This is the Log Squad!  Put your hands in the air!  Away from that\nkeyboard, now!\"\n\nDoh!\n\n=mant..."
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
}