{
  "export": {
    "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/2668",
    "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": 2668,
    "subject": "Pullman and renunciation (SPOILER)",
    "messages": 1,
    "voices": 1,
    "first": "1956-08-27T20:42:08+00:00",
    "last": "1956-08-27T20:42:08+00:00"
  },
  "messages": [
    {
      "message_id": "<urth-v0030-0452@digest.urth.net>",
      "from": {
        "name": "Adam Stephanides",
        "address": "adamsteph at earthlink.net"
      },
      "date": "1956-08-27T20:42:08+00:00",
      "subject": "(urth) Pullman and renunciation (SPOILER)",
      "in_reply_to": null,
      "reply_link": null,
      "blocks": [
        {
          "kind": "quote",
          "depth": 1,
          "text": "on 5/25/01 2:22 PM, eli wrote:\nThat didactic purpose I can appreciate, but he weakens it by forcing the\nstory.  He tried to set up \"Cold Equations\"-style plot mechanism which\nthreatens global disaster to _coerce_ Will and Lyra's decision -- rather\nthan letting us see what their own wisdom leads them to decide.  That's\na lesser story."
        },
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "It's exactly like \"The Cold Equations\": the author stacks the deck to force\na \"tragic\" choice upon his characters, which when examined more closely is\nnot really forced at all.  There has to be a name for this type of scene,\nwhere the characters frantically come up with ways to escape the choice the\nauthor wants to force upon them, and an all-knowing authority figure comes\nup with ad hoc reasons why they won't work."
        },
        {
          "kind": "quote",
          "depth": 1,
          "text": "I remember that my reading experience when I hit this was not one bit\nhigh-mindedly didactified, but was on the same mechanical level as his\nsetup: but but but the Dust ecology is not at risk, because brief\nopenings don't leak on the scale of the natural influx we've seen"
        },
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "Right; it doesn't add up.  There are billions of people on Will's world\nalone.  All these people won't produce enough Dust to keep one tiny window\nopen without Lyra and Will devoting their lives to uplifting people?  If the\ncreation-destruction ratio is that bad, all the Dust should have leaked away\nin the three hundred years since the Subtle Knife was created."
        },
        {
          "kind": "quote",
          "depth": 1,
          "text": "and\ncreating Specters is no problem with a little help, since the angel has\nsaid she can deal with those.  If it had occurred to Will and Lyra that\nthe obstacles were not absolute, they could have gone on to ask more\ninteresting questions: what if everybody did it?  are we special, to\njustify it?"
        },
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "Yes, they are.  They saved the universe, for Pete's sake.  Doesn't that\nentitle them to a break?  And in any case, \"everybody\" isn't in the same\nposition as Lyra and Will, since everybody hasn't already met their one true\nlove in another world."
        },
        {
          "kind": "quote",
          "depth": 1,
          "text": "And the question Pullman didn't dare to ask them: even if\nwe can, should we?"
        },
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "Pullman does discuss this a little, at the very end, where Lyra says that if\nshe and Will had \"put themselves first,\" they wouldn't have been able to\nbuild the Republic of Heaven.  But as Moloney pointed out in his review,\nvalorizing this sort of renunciation conflicts with Pullman's overall\nanti-religious message.\n\n--Adam"
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
}