{
  "export": {
    "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/3223",
    "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": 3223,
    "subject": "5HOC",
    "messages": 2,
    "voices": 2,
    "first": "2002-05-07T01:24:45+00:00",
    "last": "2002-05-07T21:17:13+00:00"
  },
  "messages": [
    {
      "message_id": "<urth-v0205-885@digest.urth.net>",
      "from": {
        "name": "David Duffy",
        "address": "davidd at qimr.edu.au"
      },
      "date": "2002-05-07T01:24:45+00:00",
      "subject": "(urth) Re: 5HOC",
      "in_reply_to": null,
      "reply_link": null,
      "blocks": [
        {
          "kind": "quote",
          "depth": 1,
          "text": "alga wrote:\nWithout following the argument very closely, let me suggest that with\nthe Annese, GW references the fairy tradition--he is not alone among\ngood sf writers to do so. Faries are flummoxed by \"cold\niron\"--i.e.tools. They can sometimes shapeshift. And they have been\nknown to interbreed with humans, as well has to kidnap human children."
        },
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "And are polymorphic: short and ugly, taller and fair."
        },
        {
          "kind": "quote",
          "depth": 1,
          "text": "Yes, of course there is the Australian \"dreamtime,\" quite\nspecifically."
        },
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "It is the obvious link, given the \"abo\" terminology, which I think is\nunique to Australian vernacular, but there is little material specific\nto indigenous Australian traditions in \"A Story\".  The Dreamtime ended\nlong before 1788, though it is a nice conceit to imagining stopping\nwith the introduction of European time.  I think it is a nod to Bradbury,\nnot _The Exiles_ but a similar short."
        },
        {
          "kind": "quote",
          "depth": 1,
          "text": "Adam wrote:\nI can turn the question around, though: why, if Wolfe wants us to\nbelieve in prehistoric starcrossers and Shadow Children telepathically\nhiding the St.  Anne, does he put this information in a document\nentitled simply \"A Story\" whose purpose is unknown, and which is\nmostly fictional in any case (unless you believe that the oral\ntradition preserved all Sandwalker's words and thoughts)?"
        },
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "To be tricksy and ambiguous ;)  I can't believe anyone would be gullible\nenough to believe Wolfe when he tells an interviewer Marsch was a shadow\nchild!  Unfortunately he is not so fervent a modernist as to provide\na key to his works cf Joyce (writing to mates to tell them what each\nchapter of Ulysses is *really* about, and almost btw what David is\nreading ;)).\n\nOf course, we are allowed to have multiple worldviews simultaneously\n\"true\" in this postmodern era.\n\n_\"A Story\"_ is pretty Wolfean in its' equation of simplicity and godliness\nversus the more technologically adept and nasty Mars(c)hmen, see the\nepigraph from StJotC.  Aside from _VRT_, one could easily believe that\nNo. 5 wrote it:\n1) killing and replacing a twin -- the twin in this case is the\nother No 5 personality that runs things while the narrator is blacked out.\nIt is presumably been inculcated by the father as in\n\n2) The castration, and nightly examination of dreams and visions by\nLastwind, a surrogate father.\n\n3) cultural details: flails, ordeal by fire, mating with trees, drowning\nto honour rivers, stone tools not being needed\n4) Etruscans, Atlantis and Gondwanaland\n5) Veil: in where did the slavery and cruelty come from -- Marshmen\n\n\n\nDavid Duffy.\n\n\n\n| David Duffy (MBBS PhD)                                         ,-_|\\\n| email: davidD at qimr.edu.au  ph: INT+61+7+3362-0217 fax: -0101  /     *\n| Epidemiology Unit, Queensland Institute of Medical Research   \\_,-._/\n| 300 Herston Rd, Brisbane, Queensland 4029, Australia  GPG 4D0B994A v"
        }
      ]
    },
    {
      "message_id": "<urth-v0205-910@digest.urth.net>",
      "from": {
        "name": "Adam Stephanides",
        "address": "adamsteph at earthlink.net"
      },
      "date": "2002-05-07T21:17:13+00:00",
      "subject": "Re: (urth) Re: 5HOC",
      "in_reply_to": "<urth-v0205-885@digest.urth.net>",
      "reply_link": "subject",
      "blocks": [
        {
          "kind": "quote",
          "depth": 1,
          "text": "on 5/6/02 8:24 PM, David Duffy at davidD at qimr.edu.au wrote:\n_\"A Story\"_ is pretty Wolfean in its' equation of simplicity and godliness\nversus the more technologically adept and nasty Mars(c)hmen, see the\nepigraph from StJotC."
        },
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "Also in the opposition between the individualistic Sandwalker and the\ncollectivist Marshmen and Shadow children: note also that Victor calls the\nmountain-dwelling Annese the Free People, and claims to belong to the\nLaissez-Faire Party.\n\n--Adam"
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
}