{
  "export": {
    "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/1658",
    "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": 1658,
    "subject": "Jonas' port",
    "messages": 1,
    "voices": 1,
    "first": "1999-06-01T10:57:12+00:00",
    "last": "1999-06-01T10:57:12+00:00"
  },
  "messages": [
    {
      "message_id": "<urth-v0027-0043@digest.urth.net>",
      "from": {
        "name": "Michael Andre-Driussi",
        "address": "mantis at sirius.com"
      },
      "date": "1999-06-01T10:57:12+00:00",
      "subject": "(urth) Jonas' port",
      "in_reply_to": null,
      "reply_link": null,
      "blocks": [
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "corncrake wrote, regarding the disappearance of the port that Jonas and co.\nwere looking for:"
        },
        {
          "kind": "quote",
          "depth": 1,
          "text": "What, presumably: it's turned into a citadel, with torturers, witches,\nmagic atria, homunculi, the works.  Nowhere a hard-working sailor can land\na spaceship any more."
        },
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "Here's an interesting point we can all agree with, however tentatively <g>.\n\nBut, in turn, it raises some interesting questions!  For example, what kind\nof low tech sputnik was Jonas flying/crashing, anyway?  Because the tender\nthat brings Severian and Burgundofara to Urth does not need any sort of\n\"port\" at all--it doesn't even have to land in water, like the ships in\n5HC.  It just lands its Greco-Roman keel down on the ground, then lifts off\nagain . . . all this, in the decadent Era of Typhon!\n\nGranted the usual disclaimers: Wolfe hadn't written URTH yet; Wolfe gets\nconfused, forgetful; etc.\n\n\"Low tech sputniks\" like, for clear example, the type which fossilize into\nthe towers on Citadel Hill.\n\nHere's an important point about Jonas: because he has read Lewis Carroll,\nbecause he has read some history from the same rough time-frame, Jonas is\nanother 20th century viewpoint character. (More useful than Robert and\nMarie because he sees the Commonwealth and responds in words.)  He knows\nthat the Theseus story has been warped from the version he =read=, just\nlike we know from the same version we =read= (that is to say, neither we\nnor he heard it told by the ancient Hellenic storytellers).  If we can\naccept this, then we will also probably see that the middle ages Jonas\nrefers to in talking with Severian are =our= historic European Middle Ages,\nnot some posthistoric analog--thus, Jonas is speaking for a 20th century\nobserver, looking around at the society of the Commonwealth and saying, no,\nthis =cannot= have lasted this long--even the European Middle Ages only\nlasted a few centuries, not a chiliad or more.\n\nSo!  If this is the case, then what are the markers of \"deep\" or \"big\" time\nthat Jonas has =just= learned?\n\nGranted that there is something like \"time shock\" at work on some\ncharacters in Severian's narrative: Jonas is experiencing it in the\nantechamber after who knows how many years/decades/centuries of wandering\nUrth; Severian gets it in jiff time by seeing the towers of Citadell Hill,\nafter all sorts of obvious clues that he was not prepared to interpret\ncorrectly.  Time shock makes Severian sort of crazy (well, more crazy than\nusual) and might be the best explanation for his sudden murder of Prefect\nPrisca; and likewise it could be used as the entire reason for Jonas'\ntemporary insanity in the antechamber and after.\n\n(Jonas never saw Citadel Hill--that might have triggered \"time shock,\" if\nwhat I'm saying has any bearing.)\n\nThus, in the same way that Severian blithly strolled the land, thinking\nhimself in his own era until he was shocked into reality, so Jonas probably\nthought he was stranded in some short-period dark age . . . having no clear\nnotion of just how long and deep a drop the civilization had gone through.\n\n(\"Time shock\" might also be the first stage of a deeper \"resurrection\nshock\" in the case of Miles and Dorcas.  The time shock is based upon the\nrealization that the world you knew \"just yesterday\" is long gone, along\nwith all the people you once knew (if you've been gone long enough); the\nresurrection shock is the spooky knowledge that you were actually dead.\nResurrection shock involves temporary amnesia which =might= be a function\nof how long the subject was dead--Mineas was only dead a few minutes, so\nhis amnesia might clear up within a day or two; Dorcas was dead for forty\nyears and her amnesia lifts gradually over several months.)\n\n=mantis="
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
}