{ "export": { "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/2760", "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": 2760, "subject": "\"Copperhead\": What went wrong", "messages": 2, "voices": 2, "first": "2001-08-03T18:16:17+00:00", "last": "2001-08-03T19:28:59+00:00" }, "messages": [ { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Roy C. Lackey", "address": "rclackey at stic.net" }, "date": "2001-08-03T19:28:59+00:00", "subject": "(urth) \"Copperhead\": What went wrong", "in_reply_to": null, "reply_link": null, "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "It turns out that I was all wrong about the apparent timeframe difficulties\nof \"Copperhead\" that I distracted the list with a few months back. The New\nPresident had not been in office for the fifteen months or so that I\nthought, which seemed to place added emphasis on his being referred to as\n\"New\". The president came to office in the usual way. His inauguration, the\ncrash, the appearance of Jane Doe, and the day the story takes place were\nall in the same calendar year. There was no second spring of his presidency.\nSorry about that. The story takes place in the middle of October.\n\nHow do I know this? Mantis told me so. A few weeks ago he e-mailed me to let\nme know that he had written to Gene Wolfe a few months earlier about\n\"Copperhead\", in the course of which he mentioned my squabbles about the\ntimeframe, to which Wolfe replied as outlined above; he didn't see any\nproblem with the timeline of the story. I reminded mantis of the reference\nto \"the spring night\" toward the end of the story, which had been my reason\nfor going off on that tangent in the first place. There I left the matter\nuntil, to shorten this up, I received a note from Gene Wolfe today\nacknowledging that the \"spring\" reference in the story was an error and\napologizing--of all things--for it. Sheesh. All that for a simple, one-word\nmistake that he was hardly accountable to me for. What can I say? They don't\nmake 'em like that anymore.\n\n-Roy" } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Michael Andre-Driussi", "address": "mantis at siriusfiction.com" }, "date": "2001-08-03T18:16:17+00:00", "subject": "Re: (urth) \"Copperhead\": What went wrong", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Roy wrote:\nHow do I know this? Mantis told me so. A few weeks ago he e-mailed me to let\nme know that he had written to Gene Wolfe a few months earlier about\n\"Copperhead\", in the course of which he mentioned my squabbles about the\ntimeframe, to which Wolfe replied as outlined above; he didn't see any\nproblem with the timeline of the story." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "It's like a game of \"whisper down the alley.\"\n\nIn a letter to Gene Wolfe I said I liked \"Copperhead\" and I'd been\nechatting about it with Roy; how we were both thrown by that \"new\npresident\" thing, but in different ways; and all my sense of civil war\nmenace in the story; and then I alluded to Roy's timeline and how it didn't\nadd up. (I also wrote that Roy got into the timeline habit through trying\nto talk sense to me about PEACE.)\n\nThat's why it is like a game of \"whisper\": if I had given him the timeline\nverbatim, we could have skipped a step or two.\n\nAnywho, Gene Wolfe wrote back. I didn't pass the note on to Roy for weeks\nor months, I can't remember how long it was. Bad. By that point I had new\nideas of how I had misinterpreted things in \"Copperhead,\" for example,\ntaking the presidential \"campaign\" as being something that goes on for a\nyear before the election (which is how I tend to think of it), rather than\nsomething that starts only after the party convention nominates a candidate\n(which is how Wolfe meant it). Roy cut right through all that fuzzy\nthinking with the text, of all things!" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "I reminded mantis of the reference\nto \"the spring night\" toward the end of the story, which had been my reason\nfor going off on that tangent in the first place. There I left the matter\nuntil, to shorten this up, I received a note from Gene Wolfe today\nacknowledging that the \"spring\" reference in the story was an error and\napologizing--of all things--for it. Sheesh. All that for a simple, one-word\nmistake that he was hardly accountable to me for. What can I say? They don't\nmake 'em like that anymore." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "While we're on the topic, let me back up to the top of the loop. A funny\nthing is, I didn't consciously think of Jane Doe as Lilith even when I\nwrote that the end place reminded me of the weird place in LILITH. (Hard\nto believe, but there you have it: duh?) Which, in turn, leads to another\ntidbit: years ago I started reading LILITH and then put it down as starting\ntoo slow, but then a couple years later I picked it up from where I left\noff and read it through (it got a lot better until close to the end where\nit faltered again). Having finished LILITH, I mentioned this to Gene Wolfe\nand he congratulated me, saying he had never been able to finish it himself\n-- so, unless he did so in the intervening span of vague time, I know he\nhasn't read LILITH itself.\n\nWhich is neither here nor there, really. The end place reminds me of a\nplace in LILITH; Jane Doe definitely has a Lilith aspect to her; Gene Wolfe\nhas not read LILITH.\n\nThat's all for now -- I have to read some Grimm's Fairy Tales to the locals\nimmediately. When we left off last night, Snow White had just been killed\nfor the first time by the wicked stepmother . . .\n\n=mantis=" } ] } ] }