{
  "export": {
    "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/2390",
    "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": 2390,
    "subject": "\"And When They Appear\"",
    "messages": 3,
    "voices": 3,
    "first": "2000-09-20T09:45:34+00:00",
    "last": "2000-09-22T12:40:48+00:00"
  },
  "messages": [
    {
      "message_id": "<urth-v0029-0217@digest.urth.net>",
      "from": {
        "name": "Michael Andre-Driussi",
        "address": "mantis at sirius.com"
      },
      "date": "2000-09-20T09:45:34+00:00",
      "subject": "(urth) re: \"And When They Appear\"",
      "in_reply_to": null,
      "reply_link": null,
      "blocks": [
        {
          "kind": "quote",
          "depth": 1,
          "text": "Adam wrote:\nI finally got around to reading STRANGE TRAVELLERS, though I'd read a\nnumber of the stories in it before.  On a first reading, I'd say the\nmajor one I'd missed is \"And When They Appear.\"  This is one of Wolfe's\ngrimmest stories (which is saying a lot), made more powerful by the\nmatter-of-fact narration and by the deceptive \"Christmas story\"\natmosphere of the first half.  (It just struck me that this first half\nreads a lot like a Bradbury pastiche.)"
        },
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "I, too, thought of Bradbury with this story . . .\n\nhttp://www.english.bham.ac.uk/ultan/st.htm\n\nthere's not much more than that, but I provide the link anyway.\n\n=mantis="
        }
      ]
    },
    {
      "message_id": "<urth-v0029-0219@digest.urth.net>",
      "from": {
        "name": "Adam Stephanides",
        "address": "adamsteph at earthlink.net"
      },
      "date": "2000-09-20T15:33:32+00:00",
      "subject": "Re: (urth) re: \"And When They Appear\"",
      "in_reply_to": "<urth-v0029-0217@digest.urth.net>",
      "reply_link": "subject",
      "blocks": [
        {
          "kind": "quote",
          "depth": 1,
          "text": "Michael Andre-Driussi wrote:\n\nI, too, thought of Bradbury with this story . . ."
        },
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "And the link you provide cites \"There Will Come Soft Rains.\"  I actually\nhadn't been thinking of that one; just the idea of a boy meeting a whole\nbunch of fictional or legendary Christmas figures on Christmas struck me\nas very Bradbury-like.  Of course, if Bradbury had written it, it would\nhave ended very differently (although he did write some dark stuff early\nin his career).\n\nWhile I'm thinking of it: the man who takes Sherby is referred to\nseveral times as \"Corporal Charlie\" (as he instructs Sherby) but once as\n\"Uncle Charlie.\"  Is this last a typo?\n\n--Adam"
        }
      ]
    },
    {
      "message_id": "<urth-v0029-0221@digest.urth.net>",
      "from": {
        "name": "Tony Ellis",
        "address": "tony.ellis at futurenet.co.uk"
      },
      "date": "2000-09-22T12:40:48+00:00",
      "subject": "(urth) re: \"And When They Appear\"",
      "in_reply_to": "<urth-v0029-0219@digest.urth.net>",
      "reply_link": "subject",
      "blocks": [
        {
          "kind": "quote",
          "depth": 1,
          "text": "Adam Stephanides wrote:\nMichael Andre-Driussi wrote:"
        },
        {
          "kind": "quote",
          "depth": 2,
          "text": "I, too, thought of Bradbury with this story . . ."
        },
        {
          "kind": "quote",
          "depth": 1,
          "text": "And the link you provide cites \"There Will Come Soft Rains.\"  I actually\nhadn't been thinking of that one;"
        },
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "'And when they appear' does seem to have something of a Bradbury vibe.\n‘There Will Come Soft Rains’ is the obvious choice, but even when I was\nreading the story for the first time I thought of another:\n'Jack-in-the-box', collected in 'The Small Assassin'.\n\nThat too is a story of a boy living in a house that is at once his whole\nworld and his prison. Like House, the boy’s mother wants to keep her\nlittle boy from going out into the real world. House uses holograms, she\nuses lies. Both stories share the sense that the protagonist has to\nescape this situation in order to be fully alive, that Jack can’t stay\nin his box forever.\n\nBoth seem to be, among other things, rite-of-passage stories. They’re\nabout the bittersweet process of growing up and leaving behind the world\nof childhood with all its pretty lies. Wolfe’s story, as I read that\nambiguous ending, seems to be saying that we should take something with\nus from childhood. Sherby isn’t nice to Santa, he doesn’t want to play\nlet’s-pretend any longer, but he’s left at the end wishing that he had."
        },
        {
          "kind": "sig",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "Tony Ellis\nOn-line Editor, PC Format magazine\n01225 442244 x2349\nhttp://www.pcformat.co.uk"
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
}