{
  "export": {
    "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/2003",
    "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": 2003,
    "subject": "nevermind the holes, whatabout the sails?",
    "messages": 2,
    "voices": 2,
    "first": "1999-12-02T11:00:18+00:00",
    "last": "1999-12-06T20:14:06+00:00"
  },
  "messages": [
    {
      "message_id": "<urth-v0028-0574@digest.urth.net>",
      "from": {
        "name": "Michael Andre-Driussi",
        "address": "mantis at sirius.com"
      },
      "date": "1999-12-02T11:00:18+00:00",
      "subject": "(urth) nevermind the holes, whatabout the sails?",
      "in_reply_to": null,
      "reply_link": null,
      "blocks": [
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "The white holes might stand up to some kind of historical science-lens\nexamination, but the sailing starships have no such fig leaf!\n\nBecause of a superficial similarity to the 1964 Clarke model \"solar sails,\"\nthe sf reader is lulled into thinking that they are such.  But there is no\nway that solar sails could do what the mirror sails do; and the sf reader\nwho was thus hoodwinked by his own sfnal knowledge feels a bit put out by\nit (I can sympathize, even though in this case I was not affected): THE\nSCIENCE IN SCIENCE FICTION (1982) zeroes in on this:\n\n\"Since that time [1964], some writers have romantically, if implausibly,\nimagined great sailing ships travelling even between the stars, though the\npressure of light would indeed be extremely small in the vast empty spaces\noutside our Solar System [and it ain't all that strong inside the System,\neither].  Gene Wolfe, in his continuing saga THE BOOK OF THE NEW SUN,\nimagines such a form of travel\" (p. 22).\n\nRight.  (FWIW Wolfe might have been using similar ships in 5HC.)  But prior\nto Clarke's 1964, any such sails would have been taken as pure fantasy,\nlike Cyrano going to the Moon by birdflight, or Poe's Hans Pfall (sp?)\ngoing there by balloon.  Didn't Lord Dunsany have some ships sailing\nbetween the stars?  What about Merrit's SHIP OF ISHTAR, wasn't that a\nsimilar contraption?\n\n\"Oh, if =only= Gene had used the Bussard Ramjet <tm> instead!  After all,\nthe Bussard Ramjet <tm> had been endorsed by =Carl Sagan= (kook hunter)!!\"\n(heh-heh)\n\nWell the serious side to comparing the Bussard Ramjet with the mirror sails\nis that both are systems that \"live off the land\" as they travel; both\nsystems catagorically reject fuel-tank rocket systems as being completely\ninadequate for the task of starflight.  So something between Hitler's V2\nrocket and Mr. Scott's Warp Drive is required.  And obviously \"sails\" fit\nthe bill perfectly for the sort of story that Gene Wolfe is telling,\nscience be damned!\n\nAnyway, all this is pretty serious stuff for the people who read Wolfe as\n\"hard-ish sf\" rather than \"science fantasy.\"  And I do count myself in that\ncrowd, or at least I recognize my face in there amongst them.\n\n=mantis="
        }
      ]
    },
    {
      "message_id": "<urth-v0028-0594@digest.urth.net>",
      "from": {
        "name": "Jim Jordan",
        "address": "jbjordan at gnt.net"
      },
      "date": "1999-12-06T20:14:06+00:00",
      "subject": "Re: (urth) nevermind the holes, whatabout the sails?",
      "in_reply_to": "<urth-v0028-0574@digest.urth.net>",
      "reply_link": "subject",
      "blocks": [
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "Sails for flying between the stars are in several Cordo Smith stories, but\nWolfe may not have gotten them from him.\n\nNutria"
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
}