{
  "export": {
    "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/1892",
    "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": 1892,
    "subject": "Intro to Wolfe, my viewpoint",
    "messages": 1,
    "voices": 1,
    "first": "1999-11-01T20:35:29+00:00",
    "last": "1999-11-01T20:35:29+00:00"
  },
  "messages": [
    {
      "message_id": "<urth-v0028-0331@digest.urth.net>",
      "from": {
        "name": "Mitchell A. Bailey",
        "address": "mab at lindau.net"
      },
      "date": "1999-11-01T20:35:29+00:00",
      "subject": "(urth) Intro to Wolfe, my viewpoint",
      "in_reply_to": null,
      "reply_link": null,
      "blocks": [
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "As you probably can tell, I'm not a literature scholar. I'll have to\nparaphrase Sev's line on this subject: if I sometimes manage to seem a\npeer of the esteemed contributors to this list, or at least one whose\ncompany does not shame them (perplexes? annoys?) it is to a significant\nextent due to that erudition to which I've been exposed here. \n\nAs a chemical engineering major, I tended to shuffle my way through\nliterature courses in college. I did read the more 'conventional' sort\nof sf such as Niven. Probably the first Wolfe I ever read were the short\nstories \"Continuing Westward\" and \"War Beneath the Tree\", not very\ndistinctive or inspiring. Non-SF fantasy such as Tolkien and Stephen R.\nDonaldson's Thomas Covenant cycle were also favorites. My late brother\nand I would pass these back and forth and remark on them.\n\nThen one fateful summer break, my brother unearthed a copy of 5HC from a\nsurplus paperbacks bin at my father's college bookstore, in preparation\nfor a family trip to the coast near Charleston, SC. Finding myself on\nthe porch of the cottage with little to do, I picked up that copy of 5HC\nand started reading it. It didn't hurt that Charleston and the\nsurrounding countryside have a fair resemblance to some of the places\ndescribed in 5HC anyway (Chas. even has a Citadel!<g>). I was hooked!\n\nBeing used to the likes of Larry Niven, I kept looking for the abo\nmystery to get cleared up somewhere. I kept wondering when Victor was\ngoing to get released, or what the deal was with all the cloning. In the\nhands of, say Niven, we would not only know if there were any abos and\nwhere they went, but Louis Wu or Gil Hamilton would have discovered that\nthe Pierson's puppeteers or the Pak protectors were behind it all. \n\nGradually, as the sun set over the meadowmeres of the Carolina coast I\ncame to understand that this thing had dimensions I was hardly equipped\nto perceive beneath its superficially goes-nowhere triple plotlines.\n\nOf course when _Shadow_ started appearing in paperback a couple of years\nlater I snapped it up greedily, mining its multiple layers.\n\nSo I say don't be bashful; let your friends take the plunge with 5HC.\nEither they are thoughtful enough to appreciate it (notice I don't say\nsolve it or understand it), or else not. Maybe the \"Doc-Death-Island\" or\n\"Dead Man\" stories might be a decent intro, just to get them accustomed\nto Wolfe's distinctive style. After that, they can tackle BNS and UNS\nand the Soldier series."
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
}