{
  "export": {
    "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/2190",
    "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": 2190,
    "subject": "Pratchett",
    "messages": 2,
    "voices": 2,
    "first": "2000-04-14T13:41:58+00:00",
    "last": "2000-04-14T21:18:58+00:00"
  },
  "messages": [
    {
      "message_id": "<urth-v0028-0899@digest.urth.net>",
      "from": {
        "name": "Craig.Christensen",
        "address": "craig.christensen at lawson.com"
      },
      "date": "2000-04-14T13:41:58+00:00",
      "subject": "(urth) Pratchett",
      "in_reply_to": null,
      "reply_link": null,
      "blocks": [
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "I have heard that Terry Pratchett has a habit of cramming his books with clever\nreferences to other books and authors.  Most are too clever for me to catch, but\nthis one in Carpe Jugulum made me think it might be a nod toward Wolfe and the\nLong/New Sun books.\n\n\"On one shelf alone he found fourty-three remarkably similar accounts of a great\nflood, and in every single one of them a man very much like Bishop Horn had\nsaved the elect by building a magical boat.\""
        }
      ]
    },
    {
      "message_id": "<urth-v0028-0900@digest.urth.net>",
      "from": {
        "name": "Jack and Melissa Holcomb",
        "address": "jackandmel at socket.net"
      },
      "date": "2000-04-14T21:18:58+00:00",
      "subject": "Re: (urth) Pratchett",
      "in_reply_to": "<urth-v0028-0899@digest.urth.net>",
      "reply_link": "subject",
      "blocks": [
        {
          "kind": "quote",
          "depth": 1,
          "text": "I have heard that Terry Pratchett has a habit of cramming his books with\nclever\nreferences to other books and authors.  Most are too clever for me to\ncatch, but\nthis one in Carpe Jugulum made me think it might be a nod toward Wolfe and\nthe\nLong/New Sun books."
        },
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "In my experience, Pratchett's parodies of anything and anybody are anything\nbut subtle -- although as with any parody, you need to have at least casual\nfamiliarity with the original in order to \"get it.\"  Here, though, I think\nyou may be working too hard to see something that isn't necessarily there.\nIt seems far more likely that Pratchett and Wolfe were working from the same\nsource material -- which is, after all, anything but esoteric.  (My kid has\none version of it memorized, after all.)"
        },
        {
          "kind": "quote",
          "depth": 1,
          "text": "\"On one shelf alone he found fourty-three remarkably similar accounts of a\ngreat\nflood, and in every single one of them a man very much like Bishop Horn\nhad\nsaved the elect by building a magical boat.\""
        },
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "Maybe.  The library thing, more than the flood, seems suggestive -- but\nlibraries aren't exactly rare in fantasy lit, either.  I'd say the dozens of\nversions of the flood myth (many remarkably like the story of Noah in the\nHebrew Scriptures, especially those from the Near East) seem like a more\nobvious source of this jab.\n\nHaven't read Carpe Jugulum yet -- but Terry Pratchett is one of my secret\nvices.  He's the one writer I've read who actually makes humorous fantasy\nwork, probably because he doesn't rely on puns to carry the story.  He\nwrites genuine and interesting characters.  He's head and shoulders above\nthe competition -- Piers Anthony and Robert Asprin leap to mind -- who seem\nto be writing mostly for thirteen-year-olds with fair reading skills and\nunderdeveloped taste.\n\nJack"
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
}