{ "export": { "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/2606", "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": 2606, "subject": "Witches, Daemons, Bears, Democrats", "messages": 2, "voices": 2, "first": "2001-04-27T09:21:41+00:00", "last": "2001-04-28T23:00:34+00:00" }, "messages": [ { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "David Lebling", "address": "dlebling at ucentric.com" }, "date": "2001-04-27T09:21:41+00:00", "subject": "(urth) Witches, Daemons, Bears, Democrats", "in_reply_to": null, "reply_link": null, "blocks": [ { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "From: \nWell, sure! They're Lapland witches! Shakepeare, Milton and Goethe all\nrefer to Lapland witches and I couldn't have been more thrilled to meet\nthem, and so wonderfully described. A couple of the very best Xena eps\nhave her running up against a Northern shamaness/witch. (I hope you\nappreciate the cultural juxtaposition.) There is also a rather\npornographic Fuseli painting of them; you can find it on the Web--not\nPullman's witches, for sure." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Which play is the Shakespeare reference in? And where in Milton? That's\ninteresting. I've always had a soft spot for Finnish mythology (which I know\nisn't quite the same as Lapland mythology, but hey...). When I was a kid I\ndiscovered Emil Petaja's series which was a thinly disguised _Kalevala_, and\nloved it. I have to admit I've only Xena'd a few times, and not seen any\nLapland witches. One of my Everquest characters (admission of addiction\nhere) is a shaman, and they are very fun to play." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "And, hey, vizcacha, some of us on this list\n*do* have daemons--you do youself ;-)" }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Of course I have a daemon!" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Actually, the only place in the second book (perhaps aside from the many\ncoincidences) that I thought went too far was the angels sending a\nmessage via Dr Malone's computer OTOH many people do find gremlins in\ntheir computers!" }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "That was precisely the thing I was thinking of in the second book. It read\n_exactly_ like those old five-minute-space-drive stories." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Did you all like Hester? She was my favorite daemon. (I haven't yet read\nBook 3.)" }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Yes, but the bears were my absolute favorite. I think I've read only one\nother story where bears have a civilization (as opposed to stories where\nbears are intelligent -- even Tolkien did that, and I don't count \"When\nBears Discover Fire\"). I _think_ it was a Poul Anderson story, but I can't\nrecall the title. I just remember the bears were very bearish, rather than\njust big humans in fur coats." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "From: William Ansley \nI was bothered enough to do so not because of the anti-religious\nmessage itself, but because of the vehemence with which Pullman\npresents it and because these books are putatively for children, who\nare likely, even in this day and age, to possess much less\nsophistication than those who write here." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Well, neither of my daughters have had any difficulty with that aspect so\nfar. Nor, for that matter, did they have any difficulty with the explicitly\npro-Christian messages in the Narnia books. It's true that the religious\naspect of _His Dark Materials_ gets stronger as it goes along, especially in\nthe third book, which they haven't gotten to yet. They don't have any strong\nreligious beliefs for the book to offend; we go to a Unitarian Universalist\nchurch, the only sacrosanct belief system there is that of the Democratic\nparty.\n\n Dave Lebling\n aka vizcacha" } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Jesper Svedberg", "address": "jesper.svedberg at mailbox.swipnet.se" }, "date": "2001-04-28T23:00:34+00:00", "subject": "(urth) Re: Witches, Daemons, Bears, Democrats", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "From: \"David Lebling\" \nSubject: Witches, Daemons, Bears, Democrats\nWhich play is the Shakespeare reference in? And where in Milton? That's\ninteresting. I've always had a soft spot for Finnish mythology (which I know\nisn't quite the same as Lapland mythology, but hey...). When I was a kid I\ndiscovered Emil Petaja's series which was a thinly disguised _Kalevala_, and\nloved it. I have to admit I've only Xena'd a few times, and not seen any\nLapland witches. One of my Everquest characters (admission of addiction\nhere) is a shaman, and they are very fun to play." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "The odd thing is that we don't seem to have a concept of Lapland witches\nhere in Sweden. It's probably one of those things that are more common\nthe further away from the real thing you are, we probably just thought\nthey were savages. If you like Kalevala you should try to get a hold of\nIan Watson's _Lucky's Harvest_, the first volume of \"Book of MANA\"\nsequence, which is a Planetary Romance/Fantasy also based on Kalevala." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Yes, but the bears were my absolute favorite. I think I've read only one\nother story where bears have a civilization (as opposed to stories where\nbears are intelligent -- even Tolkien did that, and I don't count \"When\nBears Discover Fire\"). I _think_ it was a Poul Anderson story, but I can't\nrecall the title. I just remember the bears were very bearish, rather than\njust big humans in fur coats." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "_The Bear Went Over the Mountain_ by William Kotzwinkle might interest\nyou as well, allthough that is perhaps more of an intelligent bear novel\nthan a bear civilization novel.\n\nIf you like Pullman or haven't got anything against reading juveniles,\nyou should check out one of my absolute favourites, Diana Wynne Jones,\nwho Wolfe has also recommended in an interview somewhere. Jones writes\nabsolutely wonderful, magical and funny novels and like Wolfe, she often\nplay games with time an perspectives. The best starting point is\nprobably the rather Wolfean _Archer's Goon_, one of her funniest and\nmost original novels, in which a british family is terrorized by a\nfamily of magicians who runs the city they live in. Other books\nespecially worth look up are _Fire and Hemlock_, her most frequently\npraised novel which I have yet to read, my personal favourite, _The\nLives of Christopher Chant_, a novel set in an alternate victorian\nEngland about a boy who travels to other worlds in his sleep, _The\nPowers of Three_ and _Howl's Moving Castle_.\n\n\n // Jesper Svedberg" } ] } ] }