{
  "export": {
    "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/311",
    "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": 311,
    "subject": "Fate, undines and Autarc",
    "messages": 2,
    "voices": 2,
    "first": "1998-01-29T10:13:13+00:00",
    "last": "1998-01-29T14:55:45+00:00"
  },
  "messages": [
    {
      "message_id": "<urth-v0006-0456@digest.urth.net>",
      "from": {
        "name": "Tony Ellis",
        "address": "tellis at futurenet.co.uk"
      },
      "date": "1998-01-29T10:13:13+00:00",
      "subject": "(urth) Re: Fate, undines and Autarc",
      "in_reply_to": null,
      "reply_link": null,
      "blocks": [
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "                                                                      29/01/98\n                                                                      09:37\n RE>Fate, undines and Autarchs\n\nCRCulver (et al):"
        },
        {
          "kind": "quote",
          "depth": 1,
          "text": "    The undines did not bring their own destruction, they survived the\ncoming of the New Sun and Urth's transformation into Ushas, as Mr. Driussi\nexplains. However, I wonder why the undine would have saved him if it led to\nthe destruction of Erebus, who was an ally of Abaia."
        },
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "Don't forget that TBOTNS is set in a universe of multiple possible futures.\nIn some futures, no doubt, saving Severian leads to him becoming Autarch\nand satrap of Erebus, in others it just leads to him failing further down the\nline - remember the chilly future seen from Master Ash's tower? Saving\nhim is a gamble, and it just happens that in the time-strand the novels\nfollow it's a gamble that fails.\n\nHaving said that, I'm not sure that it's correct even to say that saving\nSeverian \"led to the destruction of Erebus\". Erebus lives under the sea\njust like the undines, so presumably he survives too."
        },
        {
          "kind": "quote",
          "depth": 1,
          "text": "Is the copy of the BOTNS which is given to Thecla in her cell Severian's\nfirst manuscript, or a copy? (I don't know if we have a definite answer to\nthis)."
        },
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "Personally I'm still reeling from the bombshell that Thecla is able to\norder the \"lost\" BOTNS from her local library in the first place. I think it\nmust be not only a copy, but a major rewrite of the manuscript Severian\npens. How else could he fail to recognise the New Sun as himself, or\nwalk blindly into the various dangers he encounters, if he's read the \nnarrative we have?\n\nI would be interested to know just how many versions of the BOTNS\nare actually out there, and how they differ. Any educated guesses?"
        }
      ]
    },
    {
      "message_id": "<urth-v0006-0458@digest.urth.net>",
      "from": {
        "name": "Kieran Cleary",
        "address": "kierannwn at tinet.ie"
      },
      "date": "1998-01-29T14:55:45+00:00",
      "subject": "Re: (urth) Re: Fate, undines and Autarc",
      "in_reply_to": "<urth-v0006-0456@digest.urth.net>",
      "reply_link": "subject",
      "blocks": [
        {
          "kind": "quote",
          "depth": 1,
          "text": "I would be interested to know just how many versions of the BOTNS\nare actually out there, and how they differ."
        },
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "I would imagine that the version that Thecla & Sev read is similar to the\none Dr. Talos claims to have based his play on. That is, a colourful, mythic\nreworking of the \"facts\", which are more likely to be found in the Brown\nBook, purporting as it does to contain accounts of the original historical\nevents upon which the mythological corpus of the time was based. I seem to\nremember Severian commenting that Thecla & himself were about to commence\nreading the section on the Conciliator in the Brown Book, but never get\naround to it. Now *that* could possibly have contained a closer\napproximation of the events as they happen in our BotNS.\n\nIn any case, coming as it did from Ultan's library, which appears to extend\nin space and time beyond the boundaries of the citadel, it is perhaps not\nunreasonable to allow the possibility that the version of tBotNS which\nThecla gets from the library relates an account from a parallel Urth, but\none in which the New Sun also appears (Eata as New Sun? not sure of the\nspelling: Severian's old apprentice friend who he meets again in Citadel &\nfeatures in his musings on alternative workings out of the story).\n\n\nlasrach\n\n\nNorth West Labs\nFinisklin Industrial Estate\nSligo\nRepublic of Ireland\n\nTel. +353 71 69441\nFax. +353 71 69451\nemail: kierannwn at tinet.ie\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nworks\nranjit at best.com\nwhorl at lists.best.com"
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
}