{
  "export": {
    "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/2742",
    "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'"
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  "archive": "urth",
  "thread": {
    "id": 2742,
    "subject": "Wolfe on _The Dying Earth_",
    "messages": 1,
    "voices": 1,
    "first": "2001-07-30T23:46:07+00:00",
    "last": "2001-07-30T23:46:07+00:00"
  },
  "messages": [
    {
      "message_id": "<urth-v0030-0575@digest.urth.net>",
      "from": {
        "name": "Adam Stephanides",
        "address": "adamsteph at earthlink.net"
      },
      "date": "2001-07-30T23:46:07+00:00",
      "subject": "(urth) Wolfe on _The Dying Earth_",
      "in_reply_to": null,
      "reply_link": null,
      "blocks": [
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "I recently checked a collection of essays on Jack Vance, which was published\nlast year in Britain, out of the library.  One of the essays is by Gene\nWolfe, entitled \"The Living Earth.\"  In this essay Wolfe discusses each of\nthe stories in _The Dying Earth_, describing the special virtues of each.\n\nIn addition to being of interest to Vance fans, this essay reveals a good\ndeal about Wolfe's own aesthetics.  Of most relevance to TBOTNS, perhaps, is\nhis discussion of \"T'sais.\"  After summarizing the story, Wolfe says: \"That,\nof course, is not a plot.  It is an outing, an expedition, a picnic, if you\nwill.  But not a plot.  From the lack, the story gains immeasurably.\"  Wolfe\ngoes on to discuss how in the preceding stories we immediately grasp the\nplot, and hence are more interested in the incidental details than in the\nplot.  \"In 'T'sais' we are off the map.  Here there be not dragonflies but\ndragons.  Because the story is unplotted, anything can happen, and we wait\nwith baited breath to see what happens next.  Besides, we _are_ T'sais.  We\ndon't want to [be the protagonists of the earlier stories].  What we want\n(and we want it terribly) is to do what T'sais does: we want to wander\nacross the Dying Earth with protective runes on our wrists and enchanted\nswords at our sides.  'Turjan' is fiction; 'Mazirian' is better fiction;\n'T'sais' is life and Heaven.\" (89)\n\nThere are a number of other items in the book of interest to Vanceans,\nincluding a ten-page autobiographical sketch by Vance himself, essays by Tom\nShippey, David Langford and Dan Simmons, and what looks to this non-expert\nto be a comprehensive bibliography.  The book is _Jack Vance: Critical\nAppreciations and a Bibliography_, ed. A. E. Cunningham (Boston Spa &\nLondon: The British Library, 2000).  I don't know if there's a US edition;\nthere's no ISBN apparent.\n\n--Adam"
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
}