{
  "export": {
    "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/2482",
    "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": 2482,
    "subject": "5HC: primitives and skybending",
    "messages": 1,
    "voices": 1,
    "first": "2000-12-01T10:10:51+00:00",
    "last": "2000-12-01T10:10:51+00:00"
  },
  "messages": [
    {
      "message_id": "<urth-v0030-0144@digest.urth.net>",
      "from": {
        "name": "Michael Andre-Driussi",
        "address": "mantis at sirius.com"
      },
      "date": "2000-12-01T10:10:51+00:00",
      "subject": "(urth) 5HC: primitives and skybending",
      "in_reply_to": null,
      "reply_link": null,
      "blocks": [
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "We see three or four groups in \"A Story.\"  It is interesting that none of\nthem exhibit flashy shape-changing (rather than denying they have this\nability, it points to VRT wanting to downplay or erase such a possibility\nin =his= particular case, where it seems clear that he has done it\nhimself), but there is a whole lot of mind-changing, which might be just\nthe same thing, after all.\n\nIf \"A Story\" is really just a political allegory from a mixed-up kid who\nbungled his way into an espionage set-up, then it is as I said before: the\nhill people are Annese and the wetlanders are Croixans, only stripped of\nall abo/human issues.  (Taking the extreme view that there were no abos\naround when humans arrived.)\n\nOne of the things I wanted to look at in drawing up the categories was how\nvarious traits (shape-shifting, lack of manual dexterity, green eyes, etc.)\nmight be limited to one group or widespread among all.  Just as when we\ntalk of fantasy creatures, for instance hobbits, unicorns, goblins,\ncentaurs, and dragons: if we didn't already have these categories, we would\nbe matching up traits all over the place and coming up with a horde of\nchimeras (\"a hobbit has a single horn on its head, four horse legs, and it\nbreaths fire\"); we might argue about the minute difference between goblins\nand hobbits (\"no real difference at all\" <g>).\n\nI really enjoy the cultures.  Even though we are led to favor the hill\npeople, still, in that Marvin Harris way we can see that their lifestyle\nputs pressure on the individual to perform or die of neglect; their\nchildren and young people die, reducing population pressure for the group.\nThey are able to shrug off responsibility: \"it was the environment,\" \"it\nwas the individual's fault--too weak.\" The marsh people do the opposite:\nthey seem to support their own people and to deal with mounting population\npressures they \"export death\" by doing unto others rather than themselves.\n\nIt might be that each group represents a different wave of prehistoric\ncolonist from Earth: the Trees being the first, the hill people being the\nsecond, the marshmen the third and the Shadow Children being the fourth.  I\nselect them this way to make the earlier ones more \"part of the landscape\"\nthan later ones.\n\nThe Shadow Children talk of the francophone starcrossers \"bending the sky.\"\nThis used to bother me quite a bit, since it sure seemed as if they were\ndescribing an FTL stardrive (and while all the other scant details seemed\nto point towards a NAFAL stardrive, still, it could be, somehow or other,\nFTL).  Only recently did it dawn on me (duh!) that \"bending the sky\" can\nrefer to NAFAL if your frame of reference is that of a generational\nstarship. That is: the time-dilation is \"bending the sky,\" cheating death\nso that a spaceman can cross the void in a trivial amount of subjective and\nobjective time, when compared to earlier groups that crossed the same gulf\nin voyages that lasted generations.\n\nSo today I think the Shadow Children came over on generation starships.\nTheirs were slowboats, not \"nearly as fast as light\" ships.\n\n=mantis="
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
}