{
  "export": {
    "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/1822",
    "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": 1822,
    "subject": "\"The Haunted Boardinghouse\" (spoilers)",
    "messages": 1,
    "voices": 1,
    "first": "1999-10-06T14:18:22+00:00",
    "last": "1999-10-06T14:18:22+00:00"
  },
  "messages": [
    {
      "message_id": "<urth-v0028-0178@digest.urth.net>",
      "from": {
        "name": "Michael Andre-Driussi",
        "address": "mantis at sirius.com"
      },
      "date": "1999-10-06T14:18:22+00:00",
      "subject": "(urth) \"The Haunted Boardinghouse\" (spoilers)",
      "in_reply_to": null,
      "reply_link": null,
      "blocks": [
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "As Nick reminded me, the Wolfe story regarding a house with four fronts is\n\"The Haunted Boardinghouse\" (in WALLS OF FEAR anthology).\n\nI recently re-read it, and it is pretty neat, all right.\n\nThe surface gist of it: in a future neo-Victorian Illinois, Enan, a\nuniversity student (classics major), runs out of money and has to return to\nhis humble home.  He gets a letter from a classmate telling about a\npossible job at a school in Granville, and he jumps at the chance.  But\nGranville has a reputation of being a weird place.\n\nOn the way there, our hero dies.  Or nearly dies--he wakes up in a room\ninside the house with four fronts.  He meets a DARK LADY whom he is led to\nbelieve is the wife of the school master.  A lot of weird things happen.\nThe hero dies, or not, another time or two.  Then he meets another woman\nwho is introduced as the master's wife--she is not the DARK LADY.\n\nMeanwhile, the house: each face kinda sorta opens onto a different time.\n\nSTYLE          STREET    NOTES\nNeoclassical   Water     boy climbing out window (p. 195, pb edition)\nTudor          xx        window of Enan's room (p. 196)\nNeo-Victorian  Prescott  \"your world is neo-Victorian\" says DARK LADY\nContemporary   Gate\n\nSo in the end, Enan makes whoopie with a lady in the dark, and assumes her\nto be the DARK LADY, but she ain't, she's the master's wife.  She runs off\nto tell the master, and all hell breaks loose.  Then the DARK LADY appears\nto lead Enan (and others?) to Classical Times where a miraculous army of\nboys and slaves are all that stands between Hannibal and Rome.\n\n(And in a tit-for-tat symmetry, it seemed that Granville was the site of a\nsimilar military miracle that turned the Mexican Invasion at the last\nmoment, some years or decades previous to the story.)\n\nThus: the house serves as a recruitment station (Enan the classicist) and\ntime portal to help the underdogs in times of invasion.  The Neoclassical\nface is opposite the Neo-Victorian face.  All very clear cut and tidy.\n\nBut wait--how come Enan was in the Tudor face?  Is that because he was\nalready dead?  And hey--wouldn't the Tudor face link up to the Tudor world,\nand the Contemporary face link up to the 20th century?  Are there more\nbattles implied, yet not stated--or are these two faces the \"resting house\"\nfaces for the other two?  (And who gets onboard in Classical times--Latin\nsf authors?<g>)\n\nAnd what is the deal with that climbing boy?\n\nA few scattered thoughts.\n\n=mantis="
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
}