{
  "export": {
    "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/1668",
    "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": 1668,
    "subject": "Jesuits/Devils",
    "messages": 2,
    "voices": 2,
    "first": "1999-06-05T11:44:16+00:00",
    "last": "1999-06-06T14:42:35+00:00"
  },
  "messages": [
    {
      "message_id": "<urth-v0027-0064@digest.urth.net>",
      "from": {
        "name": "Patri10629",
        "address": "patri10629 at aol.com"
      },
      "date": "1999-06-05T11:44:16+00:00",
      "subject": "(urth) Re:Jesuits/Devils",
      "in_reply_to": null,
      "reply_link": null,
      "blocks": [
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "In a message dated 6/5/99 4:17:42 AM, Damen Broderick writes:\n\n<< I'd blame the big-eyed greys, myself.  (Has anyone tried exorcising \n*them*?)>>\n\nDamen has inadvertently stumbled into my realm of expertise.\n\nThe Greys were in fact exorcised in 1979 in a private ceremony at the Dallas \nHilton.\n\nThey are Whites now.\n\nAnd don't think, Sir, that simply dropping a vowel or two from your name can \nhide your True Identity.\n\nYours in Christ, \n\nPatrick O'Leary"
        }
      ]
    },
    {
      "message_id": "<urth-v0027-0065@digest.urth.net>",
      "from": {
        "name": "Peter Stephenson",
        "address": "pws at ibmth.df.unipi.it"
      },
      "date": "1999-06-06T14:42:35+00:00",
      "subject": "Re: (urth) Re:Jesuits/Devils",
      "in_reply_to": "<urth-v0027-0064@digest.urth.net>",
      "reply_link": "subject",
      "blocks": [
        {
          "kind": "quote",
          "depth": 1,
          "text": "Patri10629 at aol.com wrote:\nThe Greys were in fact exorcised in 1979 in a private ceremony at the Dallas \nHilton.\n\nThey are Whites now."
        },
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "Don't you mean `they're still Greys, because there's nothing wrong in being\ngrey, of course, but they have a much more fulfilled inner life now they\nhave been purged of their anachronistic, stereotyped attitudes to\nterrestrial species?'"
        },
        {
          "kind": "quote",
          "depth": 1,
          "text": "And don't think, Sir, that simply dropping a vowel or two from your name can \nhide your True Identity."
        },
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "But isn't it cultist to have negative attitudes towards someone just\nbecause their father may (or, of course, may not) be an inappropriate role\nmodel?\n\n\nWhile I'm posting, is it OK if I mention something Wolfe-related?  (Now I\nhave to try and get my tongue out of my cheek, but it's lodged there so\nfirmly...)\n\nI read `The Sparrow' recently, and a couple of comparisons with Wolfe\nstruck me.  The first is more or less the one that has been discussed ---\nWolfe's religious outlook is so much more subtle; you're not being beaten\nwith a stick marked `Theology' every few pages.\n\nThe second was on the subject of aliens and alien worlds.  I was\ndisappointed in `The Sparrow' to find that the world didn't strike me as\nproperly alien at all.  It's the sort of place which a hundred years would\nhave turned up along an uncharted tributary of the Amazon, rather than in\nanother star system (and this is probably grossly unfair, but I have this\nvague feeling it could even have worked better that way).\n\nThen it occurred to me --- Wolfe's alien's somehow aren't that alien\neither.  But in his case it seems to me deliberate.  In his blurring the\nboundary of fantasy and science fiction, his aliens are somewhat like his\nundines etc.: slightly altered human beings for a universe which is somehow\nslightly changed from ours.  That goes in `Cerberus' too --- and there\nperhaps there are hints that he doesn't think his aliens are so alien\neither.  It even goes for inhumi, which disguise themselves as human ---\nthe differences are more the sort you'd expect in a work of horror rather\nthan SF.  Perhaps that's another clue.  There's a scene where Severian is\nconfronted by the hierodules, and they show him that they're wearing\nhorrific masks under their benign ones, apparently just to play on human\nfears about aliens (hope I've remembered that right).  Wolfe's aliens are a\npersonification both of our search for higher meanings, and our fears of\nfinding our own darker selves at the end of the search --- which brings us\nback neatly to the subject line.  (Trite, or what.  Sorry.)\n\ncorncrake"
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
}