{
  "export": {
    "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/1611",
    "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": 1611,
    "subject": "Carlos M. post",
    "messages": 1,
    "voices": 1,
    "first": "1999-05-02T07:24:17+00:00",
    "last": "1999-05-02T07:24:17+00:00"
  },
  "messages": [
    {
      "message_id": "<urth-v0026-0081@digest.urth.net>",
      "from": {
        "name": "Roy C. Lackey",
        "address": "rclackey at stic.net"
      },
      "date": "1999-05-02T07:24:17+00:00",
      "subject": "(urth) Re: Carlos M. post",
      "in_reply_to": null,
      "reply_link": null,
      "blocks": [
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "Carlos Martinho wrote:\n\n--------"
        },
        {
          "kind": "quote",
          "depth": 1,
          "text": "The \"chruch\ninvisible\" is the deeper mystical elements that\nwould exist even if\nall churches were destroyed."
        },
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "This is a very interesting point. When I started to\nread TSOTT (and I didn't know where things were going\nto), I thought, at first, that the myths about the\n\"Conciliator\" and the \"New Sun\" were some sort of\nmemory of Christianity, just weakened, warped by time.\nAnd I don't know why, but I always thought of Dr Talos\nplay as some sort of Gospel, just warped by time and\nage (as the Minotaur myth, in the story of thecannon-boat in the labyrinth).\n--------\n<<\n\nCarlos,\n\n    I have been trying hard -- very hard -- to stay the hell out of these\nreligious wars, but this is your second post and I thought I would take the\nopportunity to extend a belated welcome to the urth lists -- er, that is\nurth list. Averns are, of course, optional, but if you can find a used\nSidero suit I would advise you to wear it. <g>\n\n    FWIW, I, too, thought the Conciliator and New Sun were Christian echoes.\nFurther, I think they were intended by Wolfe to evoke Christian resonances.\nA conciliator is certainly an apt description of a messiah. Also, the term\nis evocative of the popular role of Mary as intercessor, and Mariolatry is\nand long has been a big factor in the history of the RC church. And I don't\nthink that Wolfe could have missed the obvious New Sun = New Son\nassociation, just as Sev's career parallels that of Jesus, right down to the\ndeath of the old order and resurrection of the new, by heroes of light at\nthe same (commonly reckoned, for Jesus) age of 33.\n\n    Wolfe may have changed his mind about how the Urth cycle would end,\nsometime between _Citadel_ and _Urth_, at least judging from his intentions\nas stated in \"Helioscope\" (published, 1980), where he says:\n\n\"The challenge to science fiction today is not to describe a slightly\nhyped-up present, but a real future -- a time radically unlike the present\nthat is nonetheless derived from it. Clearly, there are more than one of\nthose futures. There is the future in which mankind returns to the sea for\nnew sources of food and raw materials. There is the future of extermination.\nI decided that the future most in keeping with the dark figure I planned and\nhis journey toward war was what I call the do-nothing future, the one in\nwhich humanity clings to its old home, the continents of Earth, and waits\nfor the money to run out.\"\n\n    Of course, he may only have been referring to the de facto situation\nwhich obtained on Urth when Sev came on the scene, but it is not in fact\nwhat happened at the end of _Urth_. Notice also that he wrote \"Earth\", not\n\"Urth\". I think this answers the question bandied about lately of which came\nfirst, Earth or Urth, and whether the latter world was informed by the\nformer. The answer is \"yes\". Jesus and Homer and FitzGerald and Carroll and\nthe rest are all dimmed figures from Urth's remote past, which is our own.\n\nRoy"
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
}