{
  "export": {
    "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/1601",
    "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": 1601,
    "subject": "Digest urth.v026.n007",
    "messages": 1,
    "voices": 1,
    "first": "1999-04-29T19:48:45+00:00",
    "last": "1999-04-29T19:48:45+00:00"
  },
  "messages": [
    {
      "message_id": "<urth-v0026-0067@digest.urth.net>",
      "from": {
        "name": "Ori Kowarsky",
        "address": "orik at sprint.ca"
      },
      "date": "1999-04-29T19:48:45+00:00",
      "subject": "(urth) Re: Digest urth.v026.n007",
      "in_reply_to": null,
      "reply_link": null,
      "blocks": [
        {
          "kind": "quote",
          "depth": 1,
          "text": "Heh.  The reply I was working on to Ori has been made redundant by\nJonathan Laidlow who summed up what I was trying to say with this:"
        },
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "I very much enjoyed Jonathan's post, thoughb I disagreed with him on the\nsame point I'm about to address below."
        },
        {
          "kind": "quote",
          "depth": 1,
          "text": "Lewis, unlike Wolfe, was writing a sort of \"literal continuation of Earth\nhistory\" with the Narnia and Space Trilogy books.  The books speculate\n\"What if there were other worlds?  Given what Christians believe, how"
        },
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "This is a very interesting point, and brings to mind Eco's \"The Island of\nthe Day Before\", where the characters argue about the existence, and\nsalvation, of beings on other planets.  I don't know if this book has been\nmentioned before, but it's a lot of fun and is a great big jumble of ideas."
        },
        {
          "kind": "quote",
          "depth": 1,
          "text": "I hate to break this to you Ori, but not only is TBOTNS not our universe,\nI'm pretty sure Wolfe made the whole thing up."
        },
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "*Gasp*  But what about that post-historic first edition I bought from Mr.\nGold at \"Books of Gold\"?"
        },
        {
          "kind": "quote",
          "depth": 1,
          "text": "Seriously, Wolfe's playful appendicies where he talks about translating a\nmanuscript from the future are a kind of parody of the attempt to fit\nWolfe's story into our world's history.  They serve to highlight the fact\nthat Urth is a fiction, that this is a story about stories.  Again see\nJonathan's post for a better explanation."
        },
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "Where I disagree with you and Jonathan is that I believe that by inviting\nthe reader to conclude that there is a future-history timeline connecting\nEarth to Urth, Wolfe creates a fictional universe which has interpretive\nimplications as the result of its recent and far-flung history;  within that\nfictional universe, it is fair to examine whether certain interpretations\nare consistent with the events described in the text or not.  TBOTNS may be\nnothing more than the avatars of certain ideas or concepts bumping into one\nanother, but I think enough care and craft has gone into creating realistic\nsettings, characters and narrative to justify asking whether certain ways of\nlooking at the story can be justified by its content.\n\nOri"
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
}