{ "export": { "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/155", "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": 155, "subject": "Little girl", "messages": 2, "voices": 2, "first": "1997-08-15T07:57:31+00:00", "last": "1997-08-15T15:16:00+00:00" }, "messages": [ { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Alice Turner", "address": "al at interport.net" }, "date": "1997-08-15T07:57:31+00:00", "subject": "(urth) Little girl", "in_reply_to": null, "reply_link": null, "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "mantis, do you think that little girl could have grown up to be Thais? We\nknow nothing about Thais except that she is tall, dark and hollow-cheeked,\nand shows good sense in bailing...no, I guess Thais is too young. The girl\nwould be at least 60.\n\nBut---here's the kind of thing you like!---Urth, p 315, Severian muses on\nlooking like a cutthroat!\n\n-alga- " } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "m.driussi", "address": "m.driussi at genie.com" }, "date": "1997-08-15T15:16:00+00:00", "subject": "(urth) Little girl", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Reply: Item #9797840 from URTH at LISTS.BEST.COM@INET01#\n\nalga,\n\nGene Wolfe is very cagey about those n-th generation prisoners of the\nantechamber, the ones Jonas talks to and then kind of flips out\nbecause of. (Severian is chatted up by relative newcomers Lomer the\npedophile (who also appears in \"The Cat\") and Nicarete the\nvolunteer.)\n\nThe n-th generation prisoners seem to be from a starship crew--one\nof the few clues: the girl says that people in black came to bury\n\"the navigator.\" They have strange ideas about the outside natural\nworld, e.g. bees and honey, which might be enhanced by their starship\norigins. Since prisoners in the antechamber are people detained for\ntrespassing or lawbreaking on the grounds of the House Absolute, their\nship may have landed or crashed nearby.\n\nWhen Jonas starts raving, in his mind he is back on a starship. We know\nthat Jonas was in a starship that crashed on Urth and he has been\nwandering around ever since. Is his mental breakdown due to the fact\nthat he has just met the prisoner descendants of his former\ncrewmates? That having achieved his goal of being reunited with his\nformer crewmates, he finds them changed and in prison, so his dream\nis dead? (I use this last phrase to note that the oracular brown book\nstory relates to Jonas as well as Severian--the story Severian reads\naloud is \"The Tale of the Student and His Son.\" After hearing this\ntale, Jonas seems to get a grip on himself--in hindsight we can guess\nthat he has recovered from the ruins of his old dream by refocusing on\nhis newer dream of Jolenta. Which is why he is ready to step into the\nmirrors when he does.)\n\nThe real trigger seems to have been the name of their earliest\nancestor: Kimleesoong. Jonas seems to have known this person, whose\nname was common in lands that have since sunk under the sea. So the\nn-th generation prisoners might also have garbled Asian names, or\nthey might have job titles as names.\n\nWhat crime did they commit? Because they probably did something.\nMaybe just landing on the gardens. Or maybe they were the Adam and Eve\ncolonists at the dawn of the Age of the Autarch (see \"Eschatology and\nGenesis\"): landed in the \"Garden,\" taken prisoner--the seed entombed.\n\n=mantis=" } ] } ] }