{
  "export": {
    "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/1647",
    "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": 1647,
    "subject": "Jonas's memories; Time's Arrow; Aboveground",
    "messages": 1,
    "voices": 1,
    "first": "1999-05-28T01:09:27+00:00",
    "last": "1999-05-28T01:09:27+00:00"
  },
  "messages": [
    {
      "message_id": "<urth-v0027-0026@digest.urth.net>",
      "from": {
        "name": "Robert Borski",
        "address": "rborski at coredcs.com"
      },
      "date": "1999-05-28T01:09:27+00:00",
      "subject": "(urth) Re: Jonas's memories; Time's Arrow; Aboveground",
      "in_reply_to": null,
      "reply_link": null,
      "blocks": [
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "mantis having discursed on my fan fictionialized version of Jonas:\n\n<Well, this reading moves very far away from or around the evidence\n(however\none wants to interpret said evidence) found in the antechamber.  That is,\nif Jonas is somehow or other related to the crash-prisoners (\"that name was\ncommon in lands where I was young\"), and they have been living in the\nchamber for umpteen generations after their crash (even assuming there is a\ndifference between \"their\" crash and \"his\" crash) . . . well.>\n\nAs usual, you bring up potent objections. My problem is that I'm not quite\nsure _whose_ memories Jonas is drawing upon when he relates his various\nantechamber reminiscences. In other words, are they native to pre-crash\nJonas, who's a metal servitor of the Hierodules? Or are they native to\npost-crash Jonas, who as a cyborg is a melange of metal and flesh? If the\nlatter, this seems to assume that when Jonas harvested the eyes, larynx and\n\"other parts\" of the man killed in the crash, the man's memories came\nincluded with everything else--sort of a whole package deal, or that maybe\ncyborg Jonas is like the laboratory hydra whose sundered halves each retain\na memory of a previously learned response when whole. Unless you're also\narguing the \"other parts\" included brain tissue and that Jonas did the\nalzabo mind slurry cocktail thing. On the other hand, if these memories\nbelong to pre-crash Jonas, there's less of a problem. They're part of the\nsame mnemonic archive that Jonas draws upon when he tells Severian about\nthe Wall and the black beans, which imho dates back to his long servitude\nwith the Hierodules--not to a bunch of memories he's uploaded from his\nhuman biografts or picked up once Urth-bound. The details about his donor\n(such as Pop being a craftsman) he could have absorbed locally, especially\nif he takes up with his now fellow tinkers. Also: Jonas as a metal man may\nhave already lived a long life before his accident. Hence may well have\nsailed with the very Asiatic star-faring race you postulate in your own\nHistory of Urth (LU, p.128), back in the age of myth, when more than a few\nastronauts were named Kim Lee Soong.\n\nAnd no I don't believe that a single crash has marooned both Jonas and the\noriginal prisoners of the antechamber. \n\nthen the mantic one having written:\n\n<Re: living backwards in time.  While I myself often write of Yesod\ntimeflow\nas going in a direction \"opposite\" that of Briah, I tend to think that\nvisitors to either universe go with the local flow: Severian does not begin\nregressing toward foetushood in Yesod; O, B, & F do not consume waste and\nexcrete foodstuffs <g>\n\nMaybe you're right. Though the latter, ridiculous though it sounds, is the\ndeft stuff of Amis's TIME'S ARROW. But I think a better paradigm is\nCarroll's THROUGH THE LOOKING GLASS, with its backwards living White Queen.\nOr maybe even Wolfe's own short story, \"My Book,\" which is allegedly about\nthe writing of New Sun, narrated in forward fashion, but relates how (and\nwith a nifty recursive loop) the book was written backwards, from last word\nto first. In my opinion this is Wolfe not just being clever, but\nconfessional, at least in terms of how he approached the plotting of New\nSun.\n\n<Why does the Green Man tell Severian that Agia can be found  \"above\nground\"> \n\nHey, good question. This one still stumps me--especially since there's\nanother reference to it in URTH, p. 186: \"Once I was told by a man who knew\nmuch of the future that a woman I sought was aboveground. I thought he\nmeant merely that she was still alive.\" But if Agia's being alive isn't\n_merely_ what the Green Man meant, what is? My goofy take on this is that\nthe Green Man may not know what Agia's relationship to Severian\nis--Severian only says, \"I am looking for a woman called Agia,\" but no\nmore. Hence the Green Man may be assuming the woman in question may be any\nnumber of possible females, from lover to mother to sister. (\"Hello,\nPsychic Network--I'm looking for a woman called Agia. Nope, sorry. If\nyou're psychic, you should already know her relationship to me.\") If lover,\nshe might be dead Thecla, who's recently been uninterred by Hildegrin for\nVodalus' up-and-coming banquet. If mother, she might be Catherine, who\nstill roams the Atrium of Time (though at least a part of it seems\nunderground). If sister, it might be Severa. Or maybe it simply is just\nAgia, as has been mentioned, waiting for Severian at the Saltus mine.\nSomething for everybody in other words--though I'm sort of partial to the\nThecla scenario myself (keener foreshadowing).\n\nRobert Borski "
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
}