{
  "export": {
    "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/2630",
    "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": 2630,
    "subject": "Digest urth.v030.n107",
    "messages": 1,
    "voices": 1,
    "first": "2001-05-08T15:38:41+00:00",
    "last": "2001-05-08T15:38:41+00:00"
  },
  "messages": [
    {
      "message_id": "<urth-v0030-0390@digest.urth.net>",
      "from": {
        "name": "Michael Andre-Driussi",
        "address": "mantis at sirius.com"
      },
      "date": "2001-05-08T15:38:41+00:00",
      "subject": "(urth) Re: Digest urth.v030.n107",
      "in_reply_to": null,
      "reply_link": null,
      "blocks": [
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "Hey, wow, I got an Urth digest!  First time in a week or so, maybe?\n\nSPOILERS FOR COPPERHEAD\n\n\nAnyway, talking about \"Copperhead.\"  Jeff Wilson beat me to saying part of\nwhat I want to say about the \"New President\" and the oddness of the\ntimeline traced by Roy.\n\nMy sense, and I've only read the story one time, is that there is indeed\nsomething odd about the president: that he is \"new,\" and his \"newness\" is\nnot due to having just been elected.  Something other than that.\n\nMy feeling as I was reading was that he was perhaps some sort of usurper\nand/or doppleganger and/or otherwise unelected-to-the-Presidency.  The\n\"easiest\" solution to all this seemed related to the alien dingus: that he\nhad somehow used it to make himself president (yet he was seemingly already\npresident when he got the dingus, so it couldn't have been at that moment\nwithout some serious timewarping going on).  The other possibilities are:\nthe executive branch has been lost through accident or assassination, and\nthe \"new\" president is the umpteenth in line, a freshman politician who now\nfinds himself in the position; or, the president is a doppleganger, that\nis, he has already been beamed with the dingus on one of the other\nsettings, and the \"new\" president is an alien in a human body.  All those\nlittle notes to himself about projecting human qualities, they sound to me\nlike either a freshman or an alien, not like a seasoned politician who does\nthese things second nature, without thinking.\n\nGranted the NP does talk about the inauguration, so he has been in some\nkind of public ceremony.\n\nAs for the timeline: my strong sense was that the Constitution has been\nsuspended; the nation is in a state of emergency, martial law, perhaps even\na new War Between the States.  If the situation is as bad as I suggest,\nthen it is obvious to everyone that there won't be an election in four\nyears, and nobody expects \"life as usual\" to go on until the crisis is\nresolved.  There is talk about a fire in Idaho that cut short the\npresidential vacation.  (The old president and others could have been\nkilled in a fertilizer/fuel bombing--are you getting the contemporary\ndetails here?)\n\nFunny thing about the title: I immediately thought of the snake.  But the\nway that the new president is fixated on that maple tree, and the way that\nthe goddess's hair is red, it made me think that she was a dryad (or\n\"maple-maiden,\" in this case) rather than a snake.  But then, in the end,\nbamm, she's a snake: just like the convolutions between text and title of\n\"The Game in the Pope's Head\" (a Wolfe story in Dozois' anthology RIPPER!)!\n\nNext item: the dead boys.  Since there has just been a suicide (with a\nweird Vince Foster feel to it), I supposed that the suicide was related to\nCopperhead herself (and her dalliance with the new president has a Monica\nfeel to it, no?).   That is, she told him no more, and so he hanged\nhimself.  And either he, or some other guy, had killed the first guy to\nknow Copperhead \"in the Biblical sense\": that was the other dead boy.\n\nRewind a bit: recall how the new president wasn't the first to have the\ndingus--the general was (? maybe someone before =him= was the likely first\nweilder of the dingus?), and he was very reluctant to hand it over.  So it\nseems likely that one or more buttons have already been pushed.  And the\nnew president says something like \"sometimes something obvious happens,\nsometimes not,\" which made it seem to me that there had been a certain\namount of experimentation going on.  Point here being that maybe the\ngeneral's fooling around with it elevated the other fellow to the\npresidency.  Or it set loose a bunch of monsters that are now ravaging the\nUSA (rather like Wolfe's bioengineered centaur in America stories, but less\nTHE WIND IN THE WILLOWS and more \"Calling All Monsters\").\n\nIs the national crisis triggered by the dingus, or was the crisis in full\nbloom and the dingus showed up?"
        },
        {
          "kind": "quote",
          "depth": 2,
          "text": "Alex, answering Paul, wrote:\nWhat's with the barking trees and winding ram's horns?"
        },
        {
          "kind": "quote",
          "depth": 1,
          "text": "I assume that's just Wolfe's way of saying \"he's a in a very weird\ncognate of our reality.\""
        },
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "I agree.  I was reminded of the weird other world in George Macdonald's\nLILITH; that degree of weirdness.  But is NP from Earth, or is he now\ncoming home again, or is he from the other place and now visiting the third\nuniverse (a grand tour)?\n\nI read the story one time, these are notes of my impressions.\n\n=mantis=\n\nSirius Fiction\nCatalog and errata sheet at http://www.sirius.com/~mantis/"
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
}