{
  "export": {
    "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/2749",
    "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": 2749,
    "subject": "Daemonising Pullman",
    "messages": 2,
    "voices": 2,
    "first": "2001-08-02T10:05:23+00:00",
    "last": "2001-08-02T11:57:02+00:00"
  },
  "messages": [
    {
      "message_id": "<urth-v0030-0585@digest.urth.net>",
      "from": {
        "name": "Tony Ellis",
        "address": "littlesense at necronomicon.co.uk"
      },
      "date": "2001-08-02T11:57:02+00:00",
      "subject": "(urth) Daemonising Pullman",
      "in_reply_to": null,
      "reply_link": null,
      "blocks": [
        {
          "kind": "quote",
          "depth": 1,
          "text": "Dan'l Danehy-Oakes wrote:\n1. This is a brilliant novel."
        },
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "<snip>"
        },
        {
          "kind": "quote",
          "depth": 1,
          "text": "...But there's no _reason_ for calling them daemons; it's just an\nin-yer-face\nchoice to irritate easily-irritated Christians."
        },
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "I'm glad you're enjoying the book I know as Northern Lights, Dan'l, but I\ncan't agree with you that this is the only reason Pullman chose the word\n\"daemon\". The Marriage of Heaven and Hell probably irritated a few\neasily-irritated Christians in its time too, but what it was supposed to do\nwas make people think.\n\nI would hope that a child reading Pullman's book might be very interested to\nlearn that a word used by Christianity to mean an incarnation of evil\noriginally meant something as harmless as \"spirit\",  and might wonder what\nother little misappropriations and mistakes may have taken place over the\nyears."
        },
        {
          "kind": "quote",
          "depth": 1,
          "text": "On a larger scale: does anyone, _can_ anyone, believe that in a world this\ndifferent -- where every human has an externalized animus/anima, where\nbears\nare sentient, etc. -- the history of the world would be _similar_ enough\nthat\nsomeone called John Calvin would become something called Pope of something\ncalled the Catholic Church?"
        },
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "The Crushed Butterfly theory of time has been tediously fashionable in SF\nwriting for a long time now, but it -is- just a theory. Another one is that\nthe stream of history would simply flow around any change, and carry on much\nas before. If that theory leads to more books like Pullman's, or Wolfe's\nThere Are Doors, where the changes are small and thought-provoking rather\nthan huge and predictable, then I for one am happy to give \"logic\" a miss\nfor a while. :-)"
        }
      ]
    },
    {
      "message_id": "<urth-v0030-0588@digest.urth.net>",
      "from": {
        "name": "Michael Straight",
        "address": "straight at email.unc.edu"
      },
      "date": "2001-08-02T10:05:23+00:00",
      "subject": "Re: (urth) Daemonising Pullman",
      "in_reply_to": "<urth-v0030-0585@digest.urth.net>",
      "reply_link": "subject",
      "blocks": [
        {
          "kind": "quote",
          "depth": 1,
          "text": "On Thu, 2 Aug 2001, Tony Ellis wrote:\nThe Crushed Butterfly theory of time has been tediously fashionable in SF\nwriting for a long time now, but it -is- just a theory. Another one is that\nthe stream of history would simply flow around any change, and carry on much\nas before. If that theory leads to more books like Pullman's, or Wolfe's\nThere Are Doors, where the changes are small and thought-provoking rather\nthan huge and predictable, then I for one am happy to give \"logic\" a miss\nfor a while. :-)"
        },
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "Well, if you're willing to admit it's illogical, I can't argue with you,\nbut I think dismissing objections as \"just the Crushed Butterfly theory\"\nis ridiculous.  All of human history and society would be very, very, very\ndifferent if men died immediately after having intercourse. No one would\never know his/her father!  No man would have more than one child!  Every\nman alive would be celibate.  This makes Star Trek Voyager look like\ntightly-plotted diamond-hard science fiction.\n\n-Rostrum"
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
}