{
  "export": {
    "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/2977",
    "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": 2977,
    "subject": "\"Hour of Trust\" supernatural vs. mundane",
    "messages": 2,
    "voices": 2,
    "first": "2002-02-21T23:24:24+00:00",
    "last": "2002-02-23T03:15:27+00:00"
  },
  "messages": [
    {
      "message_id": "<urth-v0202-199@digest.urth.net>",
      "from": {
        "name": "Michael Andre-Driussi",
        "address": "mantis at siriusfiction.com"
      },
      "date": "2002-02-21T23:24:24+00:00",
      "subject": "(urth) \"Hour of Trust\" supernatural vs. mundane",
      "in_reply_to": null,
      "reply_link": null,
      "blocks": [
        {
          "kind": "quote",
          "depth": 1,
          "text": "Andy Robertson wrote:\nMaybe here is something actually \"supernatural\" here?  Maybe the religion of\nthe rebels, if that is what it is, actually allows them to turn their bodies\ninto bombs, through meditation or feedback or something?\n\nIt's a wild thought, but then I disagree about the human flamers being\n\"minor\".  As I have posted before, I think they are expressing and proving a\nfaith."
        },
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "Yes, I think this is the reading that satisfied our friend Adam Stephanides\n(whom we haven't heard from since, hmmmm . . . check for burn marks!).\n\nThat is to say (my sense of it, until Adam returns): Clio is History. She\nis a supernatural force breaking through into the mundane world without any\nbells and whistles except for this implausible immolation bomb-thing. She\nhas been on the side of the corporations but now she is switching.\n\nSo a primary sticking-point of interpretation, that of \"realism,\" is thrown\nout. Likewise is \"motive\" and the issue of whether Clio is a mole or not,\nor anything like that, including politics and meaning. Clio is History and\nshe does as History is said to do. Fickle, capricious, all that stuff.\n\nShe may be enabling the ken-kins their immolation power as a way of testing\nthe corporations (making her, yes, a sort of fiery Kali and the ken-kins\nher faithful devotees), or the ken-kins may have created their own\ntechnological device and Clio is borrowing the effect without the mundane\nsubstance in order to signal how her favor has changed.\n\nAgain, this is very much like \"The Haunted Boardinghouse,\" but in that case\nthere were plenty of otherworldly details to establish the supernatural\nelement beyond all doubt.  (Have I mentioned yet that \"Hour of Trust\" might\nactually be linked to \"The Haunted Boardinghouse\"?  What if the hairy\nrebellion is followed by incursions from the Mexican Army?  Since that is\nthe historical linchpin of America's future in \"The Haunted Boardinghouse\"\n. . . )\n\n(The ken-kins shirt of flame reminds me of those poisoned/fire shirts of\nclassical myth--the one with blood of Nessus, for example, which got\nHerakles.)\n\nPeters thus gets broiled for, ahem, bucking History.\n\n=mantis="
        }
      ]
    },
    {
      "message_id": "<urth-v0202-210@digest.urth.net>",
      "from": {
        "name": "Roy C. Lackey",
        "address": "rclackey at stic.net"
      },
      "date": "2002-02-23T03:15:27+00:00",
      "subject": "Re: (urth) \"Hour of Trust\" supernatural vs. mundane",
      "in_reply_to": "<urth-v0202-199@digest.urth.net>",
      "reply_link": "subject",
      "blocks": [
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "mantis quoted:"
        },
        {
          "kind": "quote",
          "depth": 1,
          "text": "Andy Robertson wrote:"
        },
        {
          "kind": "quote",
          "depth": 2,
          "text": "Maybe here is something actually \"supernatural\" here?  Maybe the religion\nof\nthe rebels, if that is what it is, actually allows them to turn their\nbodies\ninto bombs, through meditation or feedback or something?\n\nIt's a wild thought, but then I disagree about the human flamers being\n\"minor\".  As I have posted before, I think they are expressing and proving\na\nfaith."
        },
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "[snip]"
        },
        {
          "kind": "quote",
          "depth": 1,
          "text": "and wrote:\nSo a primary sticking-point of interpretation, that of \"realism,\" is thrown\nout. Likewise is \"motive\" and the issue of whether Clio is a mole or not,\nor anything like that, including politics and meaning. Clio is History and\nshe does as History is said to do. Fickle, capricious, all that stuff."
        },
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "I have to agree with mantis that, in the absence of clearer indications that\nthe supernatural is involved, we have to look to a \"realism\" interpretation.\n\n[snip]"
        },
        {
          "kind": "quote",
          "depth": 1,
          "text": "(The ken-kins shirt of flame reminds me of those poisoned/fire shirts of\nclassical myth--the one with blood of Nessus, for example, which got\nHerakles.)"
        },
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "Again, this story dates from the 1970s, in the wake of the war in Vietnam,\nand that clinging fire reminds me of one of the most famous photographs of\nthe Vietnam era, that of the naked girl running down a road, trying to get\naway from the napalm that is burning on her.\n\n-Roy"
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
}