{
  "export": {
    "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/2391",
    "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": 2391,
    "subject": "\"And When They Appear\" and Other Stories",
    "messages": 1,
    "voices": 1,
    "first": "2000-09-23T11:52:07+00:00",
    "last": "2000-09-23T11:52:07+00:00"
  },
  "messages": [
    {
      "message_id": "<urth-v0029-0222@digest.urth.net>",
      "from": {
        "name": "Dave Lebling",
        "address": "dlebling at shore.net"
      },
      "date": "2000-09-23T11:52:07+00:00",
      "subject": "(urth) \"And When They Appear\" and Other Stories",
      "in_reply_to": null,
      "reply_link": null,
      "blocks": [
        {
          "kind": "quote",
          "depth": 1,
          "text": "Tony Ellis wrote:\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."
        },
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "I agree with Tony here. That was how \"And When They Appear\" struck me when I\nfirst read it.  House advises Sherby to get in the freezer with his dead\nparents: this is not subtlety!\n\nI also agree with Alga that it's a sloppy story.  A lot of Wolfe's stories\nset in the \"real world\" seem oddly disjointed to me.  The early one about a\ncounter-culture revolution against middle management comes to mind (um,\n\"Hour of Trust\" -- just looked it up), and _There Are Doors_, which I reread\nrecently and enjoyed more than on my first reading.  (Though, rereading it,\nit took a great deal of effort to take Laura's society seriously, especially\nas it differed only in detail from our own. I know it's not intended as a\nrealistic story, but the biochemistry makes no sense: \"massive immune system\nshock,\" indeed! I guess no one there has ever heard of condoms or oral sex.\nWolfe should have just said, \"it's magic.\" Tina the goddess doll was great,\nthough. She reminded me of Oreb.)\n\nWhen Wolfe has some purely didactic point to make, he's not as careful with\nthe details, perhaps.  Though the details are always wonderful.  The last\nparagraph of \"Hour of Trust.\" Eek.  Maybe \"wonderful\" isn't exactly the\nword.\n\nIn any case, one of Wolfe's perennial themes is that being out in the world\nisn't easy, being an adult isn't easy, making decisions isn't easy, etc.\n\"And When They Appear\" presents this argument in a particularly repellent\nway, but it's not that unusual, especially in his short fiction.\n\nCharacters in Wolfe books who have easy answers are almost always villains\n(North in _There Are Doors_ comes to mind).\n\n   -- Dave Lebling\n       (aka vizcacha)"
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
}