{
  "export": {
    "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/2555",
    "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": 2555,
    "subject": "5HC plot-cloaking device",
    "messages": 1,
    "voices": 1,
    "first": "2001-01-24T22:35:19+00:00",
    "last": "2001-01-24T22:35:19+00:00"
  },
  "messages": [
    {
      "message_id": "<urth-v0030-0262@digest.urth.net>",
      "from": {
        "name": "Tony Ellis",
        "address": "tony.ellis at futurenet.co.uk"
      },
      "date": "2001-01-24T22:35:19+00:00",
      "subject": "(urth) 5HC plot-cloaking device",
      "in_reply_to": null,
      "reply_link": null,
      "blocks": [
        {
          "kind": "quote",
          "depth": 1,
          "text": "Rostrum wrote:\nReading \"A Story,\" I got the impression that the field was hiding St. Anne\nfrom an already-settled-by-humans St. Croix, not shielding the whole\nsystem from Earth."
        },
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "Read \"V.R.T.\".  In one of the interrogation dialogues \"Q\" specifically says that\n\"both our worlds remained unknown when planets more distant from Earth had been\ncolonized for decades.\" The telepathic shield clearly applied to the whole system.\n\nThe fact that the starcrossers arrive so rapidly is kind of convenient for the plot,\nI agree. To say the least. But notice that the Shadow child doesn't just say he's\ngoing to remove the shield, he says of the starcrossers that he is going to \"sing\nthem in\" - which suggests he's actually telepathically summoning them. This also\nexplains why they happen to land just where they can rescue Sandwalker and co.,\nrather on any other stretch of coastland on the planet. :-)"
        },
        {
          "kind": "quote",
          "depth": 1,
          "text": "David Duffy wrote:\nI think we're in the wrong worldview here.  The song is magical, so\nits effects break down immediately from the point of view of a pre-Contact\nnarrator, no matter how acausal that appears to science fiction critics ;)"
        },
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "Well, the song -is- telepathic. It may appear magical to Sandwalker and his friends,\nbut that's because they're ignorant savages. :-)\n\nBut surely its effects would appear to \"break down immediately\" regardless of the\npoint of view of the onlookers?"
        },
        {
          "kind": "quote",
          "depth": 1,
          "text": "I would have thought that any shielding effects on foreigners would be psychic\nin nature...their own perception would be that they just hadn't got around to\ncolonizing St Anne yet."
        },
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "No, the effect of the song really was to hide the planets. See my answer to Rostrum,\njust above."
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
}