{
  "export": {
    "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/2650",
    "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": 2650,
    "subject": "The Fall, take two",
    "messages": 1,
    "voices": 1,
    "first": "2001-05-17T01:36:11+00:00",
    "last": "2001-05-17T01:36:11+00:00"
  },
  "messages": [
    {
      "message_id": "<urth-v0030-0423@digest.urth.net>",
      "from": {
        "name": "Roy C. Lackey",
        "address": "rclackey at stic.net"
      },
      "date": "2001-05-17T01:36:11+00:00",
      "subject": "(urth) The Fall, take two",
      "in_reply_to": null,
      "reply_link": null,
      "blocks": [
        {
          "kind": "quote",
          "depth": 2,
          "text": "mantis wrote:\nAs for equivalence of the action: well, the NP is trying to restore the\nprevious condition, trying to send her back or at least away; she is\ntrying to avoid that, and is willing to further the interdimentional\ncontamination/chaos by sending the NP away. So if she did anything\nbeyond that, it was pushing the wrong button! (Well, she had maybe a\nfifty-percent chance <<g>)"
        },
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "So the short answer: she could have co-operated (\"submitted\" sounds so\nheavy-handed) and allowed herself to be beamed back to her homeland.\nInstead she opted to sow more confusion but it backfired a bit. <<\n\n    But the NP, like Adam, and you, and me-- all who have had their Rubicons\nand Waterloos--never, at least in the real world, get a second chance.\nWhat's done is done and you don't get \"overs\". Even in the first part of\nyour \"ancient/magical versus modern/realistic\" causality mode there is an\ninsuperable theological difficulty: what happens when two characters from\nthe Eden story are introduced into a world where The Fall has *already*\nhappened--which it has, as least from a biblical point of view, because the\nworld the story takes place in is obviously *this* world?\n\n[snip]"
        },
        {
          "kind": "quote",
          "depth": 2,
          "text": "So I'm not sure about the continuity from one form to another. The\ngodlike man is not the NP, since the NP is in the Eden place; the\ngodlike man probably doesn't have any of the backstory (that is, I\ndon't think that the godlike man knows everything that the NP knows).<<"
        },
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "[snip]\n\n    Even if he doesn't, unless the NP stopped on the way to take a bath in\nthe Lethe *and* the Jordan, *he* certainly knows the backstory, is a Sinner,\ncertain (from a theological viewpoint all men are literally born sinners) to\ncorrupt that other Eden, to be the snake in the grass, so to speak, just\nwaiting for some foolish woman to come along so he can . . . but, hey,\nhaven't I heard this story before?\n\n    Or is that Wolfe's point? Do we get a replay of the Eden story, the same\nway we got a Second Flood in the Urth Cycle? Does that make sense, from a\nChristian point of view?\n\n-Roy"
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
}