{
  "export": {
    "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/2076",
    "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": 2076,
    "subject": "1-2-3 for me",
    "messages": 2,
    "voices": 2,
    "first": "2000-01-17T23:50:40+00:00",
    "last": "2000-01-18T09:47:06+00:00"
  },
  "messages": [
    {
      "message_id": "<urth-v0028-0700@digest.urth.net>",
      "from": {
        "name": "Nicholas Gevers",
        "address": "vermoulian at yahoo.com"
      },
      "date": "2000-01-17T23:50:40+00:00",
      "subject": "(urth) 1-2-3 for me",
      "in_reply_to": null,
      "reply_link": null,
      "blocks": [
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "The cartoon connection to \"1-2-3\" is interesting if\ninconclusive; maybe Rocky was reconceived by Wolfe as\na hirsute cocaine dealer. A story whose frame-narrated\nghost-story format strongly recalls \"1-2-3\" is \"Fish\nStory\", published in F&SF last October and available\nfor download from northern light. The resemblances\ninclude the phone motif and animal noises in the dark,\nas Jonathan has already noted elsewhere."
        }
      ]
    },
    {
      "message_id": "<urth-v0028-0701@digest.urth.net>",
      "from": {
        "name": "Jonathan Laidlow",
        "address": "laidlojm at hhs.bham.ac.uk"
      },
      "date": "2000-01-18T09:47:06+00:00",
      "subject": "(urth) 1-2-3 for me",
      "in_reply_to": "<urth-v0028-0700@digest.urth.net>",
      "reply_link": "subject",
      "blocks": [
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "William H. Ansley wrote"
        },
        {
          "kind": "quote",
          "depth": 1,
          "text": "I think the most salient feature of this story is that it is a ghost story.\nNot just that, it is a ghost story being told around a camp fire. It is\nalso a future ghost story that uses ruins from a mysterious past which\nseems a lot like our present. In these ruins a \"cursed object\" is found: a\ncell phone. This phone has to be, if not cursed, at least supernatural in\nsome way; otherwise it is hard to explain how a portable phone could still\nbe in working order after being buried in the ground for 800 years or more.\nEven its battery still has a charge!"
        },
        {
          "kind": "quote",
          "depth": 1,
          "text": "Jonathan Laidlow seems convinced that the sounds of \"something, an animal\nor something, moving around in the dark\" that occur when Dik started\ntapping two sticks together \"trying to get the noise right\" were the sounds\nof the being that brought the powder to Jo An rising up. I am equally\nconvinced it was just an ordinary animal, or the wind, and the timing was a\ncoincidence. After all, there are no mysterious movements in the underbrush\nwhen several people are banging sticks earlier, before they all had heard\nthe story. Wolfe is just emphasizing that Dik and the others were genuinely\nscared by Jak's story. It's also slightly humorous, since Dik obviously\nscared himself."
        },
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "I think you're correct to point this out - I failed to suggest in my \noriginal post that there is an ambivalence about this final scene: it \n*could* be the mysterious figure summoned by the noise, or it could \njust be an animal which ties in with the warning at the end of the \ntale. Either way the campfire participants have been reminded (and \nscared) of some folk evil (the boogeyman) which they must guard \nagainst.\n\nJonathan\n********************************************************\n\nJonathan Laidlow\nModern Languages Office, University of Birmingham, Edgbaston, Birmingham, B15 2TT, England\n0121 414 5996"
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
}