{
  "export": {
    "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/2238",
    "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": 2238,
    "subject": "the JCdeck in TD and LB",
    "messages": 1,
    "voices": 1,
    "first": "2000-05-06T17:15:24+00:00",
    "last": "2000-05-06T17:15:24+00:00"
  },
  "messages": [
    {
      "message_id": "<urth-v0028-0980@digest.urth.net>",
      "from": {
        "name": "Michael Andre-Driussi",
        "address": "mantis at sirius.com"
      },
      "date": "2000-05-06T17:15:24+00:00",
      "subject": "(urth) the JCdeck in TD and LB",
      "in_reply_to": null,
      "reply_link": null,
      "blocks": [
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "The essays that alga and I wrote about John Crowley's fiction appeared in\n\"The New York Review of Science Fiction\" no. 132, 134, and 137, available\nfor $3.50 each. Please see http://www.nyrsf.html for details on ordering.\n\nThe decks of cards John Crowley invents and uses in first THE DEEP (1975)\nand much later LITTLE, BIG (1981) are remarkably similar: \"people\" cards\n(52 in both cases), and \"action\" cards (7/14 in TD [that is, there are\nseven possessors, but each has two modes]; 21 in LB [we are only given\naround 15 of them]) which are used to modify, influence, or depict the\nactions of the people cards.\n\nWith regard to my notion of the historical Tarot reflecting the secret\nhistory of the fairies across the centuries, diminishing over time, Adam"
        },
        {
          "kind": "quote",
          "depth": 1,
          "text": "wrote:\nAn ingenious scheme to save your theory, and one which neatly solves the\nproblem of the number of cards, which had occurred to me, if only\nvaguely (I never saw alga's piece).  I see two objections, though.\n\n1) The repeated statements, in the conversation between Sophie and the\nreturned Lilac, that the number of fairies left is \"so few\" (\"A\nParliament,\" VI, 2) suggest that the number remaining is only a small\nproportion, and that there were originally hundreds or even thousands,\ntoo many for any tarot deck.  I seem to recall Sophie's shock when she\nfirst guesses that there are only fifty-two left, which would support\nthe same conclusion, but I can't find the passage.\n\n2) If the current number of Drinkwaters isn't equal to the original\nnumber of fairies, then what reason is there to think that the\nDrinkwaters replacing the fairies is a cyclical event at all?  As far as\nI can remember, the only \"race\" of fairies we ever hear about are the\nones the Drinkwaters interact with.  (Even if we accept the\nBramble-Drinkwater theory of concentric worlds as accurate, this doesn't\nimply successive types of fairies, since it's said explicitly that one\nrace of fairies occupies all the inner \"worlds.\")"
        },
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "Spoilers for THE DEEP to follow:\n\n\n\n\n\n\nIn TD, the original clonal colonists numbered 52, or there about.\nCenturies later, the Just use cards to divine who they must assassinate:\neven among hundreds or thousands of people extant in that weird little\nworld, there are still fifty-two (leaders) who stand in for the\nunsuspecting masses (peasants, merchants, etc.) and thus no matter how\nlarge the population grows, the 52 cards are elastic enough. (As people are\nkilled, new people rise to fill the vacancy in society and in the cards.)\n\nIn LB, lo and behold, we find another situation where there are 52 people\ncards, and 52 people are going to colonize a new world.  It is perhaps\noverly tempting to belive that the same rules apply: that one card can\nstand for the leader of legions.  (That is: the cards do not =normally=\nrepresent the entire population of the fairy world; it is shocking when\nthey do.)\n\nBut LB is set on our world, and our world has a real set of cards that we\nknow as \"Tarot.\"  So it seems to me that the JC deck is either the \"true\"\norginal, of which all Tarot are just poor imitations (shades of Zelazny's\nAmber and/or its deck of cards); or the JC deck is a final version\n(endproduct of Tarot-as-secret-history-of-fairies, as I mentioned before)\nand is \"true\" because it has been tweaked by the fairies themselves; or the\nJC deck has no relation to Tarot, because it is based upon playing cards,\nwith a few new \"action\" cards thrown in.  The third is the most realistic;\nI doubt that the second really occured to John Crowley, but I dreamed it up\nas a way of answering the relationship between the Tarot and the JC deck\n(since both do exist in the world of LB, iirc).  I keep juggling all three.\n\nIf one grants that the JC deck is an invention of JC rather than anything\nTarot, then one looks through JC's other fictions to see how the same is\nused there.\n\nRe: fairy bloodlines, Adam's arguments seem less and less arguments than\nagreements with alga.  He writes that the fairies are not interested in\nreproduction, but he also says that they do want a one-to-one substitution\nof themselves when they go to the next level in"
        },
        {
          "kind": "quote",
          "depth": 1,
          "text": "(And to revert to a logical viewpoint, if\nthe fairies' goal is to spread their genes, wouldn't it be simpler and\nquicker to just mate with as many humans as possible, rather than\narrange one human-fairy marriage and wait a century for its\ndescendants?)\n\nThe ulterior motive behind the fairies' meddling with the Drinkwaters is\nnot reproduction, I would argue, but survival.  For some reason, the\nDrinkwaters have to cross over into the fairies' country in order for\nthe fairies to be able to go further inward themselves, and take refuge\nfrom the humans.  Perhaps, though this is just a guess, the substitution\neven has to be one-to-one, which would explain why there are fifty-two\nfairies and fifty-two Drinkwaters"
        },
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": " . . . well, this is \"zero population growth\" reproduction; reproduction\n=is= biological survival; it fits with what alga is saying--not that they\nwant to multiply in such numbers as to swarm over the Earth (Adam's \"mate\nwith as many humans as possible\" strawman), but to multiply in numbers\nsufficient to start the colony in the next world, when it becomes vacant.\n\nAdam likewise argues against the notion of a fairy bloodline, insisting\nthat Alice & Co. are all 100% human, but he also writes that there is only\none kind of fairy. So then I guess Adam is arguing the human colonization\nof the next world as a truly new event (a sort of \"Firebase Alpha\"), with\nfurther human journeys of conquest inward ahead; because otherwise, if he\nsees that the fairies have guided and/or seeded the human family, giving\nthem powers that normal humans do not have (and the powers seem to run in\nthe family, but they might be \"given\" by the fairies rather than\n\"inherited\" from the human parents), then the distinction between human and\nfairy races begins to break down: we have at least a hybrid fairy/human\ngroup (violating the \"one fairy race\" theory), or perhaps a human group\nthat has been made fully fairy.  Through hardware (genetics) and/or\nsoftware (theosophy).\n\nThat is to say, Adam agrees with alga: there is only one race of fairy, and\nAlice & Co. is fairy as much as the old fairies were/are; and the fairies\nare the ones and the only ones who plumb the worlds-in-worlds.\n\nAs for \"bringing the cards in line with the house,\" no, no, no: it is the\nother way around.  JC invented the cards years before, for TD: he built the\nhouse around it.\n\nAnd yes, I use the toy from \"In Blue\" (from NOVELTY) to peg the number of\ninner worlds in LB at five: the first world inward is the world of Fire.\nWhich is another plausible reason why \"Smoky\" (note fire association)\ncannot cross the line, or so it seems to me.  (Other plausible reasons\ninclude, but are not limited to: he is human and the others are fairy; he\ndoes not believe, and they do believe; he chooses oblivion, they choose\nanother world.)\n\n=mantis="
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
}