{ "export": { "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/3276", "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": 3276, "subject": "Blue is Hell!", "messages": 2, "voices": 2, "first": "2002-05-23T14:30:46+00:00", "last": "2002-05-23T21:38:00+00:00" }, "messages": [ { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Adam Stephanides", "address": "adamsteph at earthlink.net" }, "date": "2002-05-23T14:30:46+00:00", "subject": "(urth) Blue is Hell!", "in_reply_to": null, "reply_link": null, "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "When I read alga's statement that the inhumi were demons, my first thought\nwas Green = Hell, Blue = Purgatory, Whorl = Heaven. (I'm sure this must\nhave been mentioned before.) But on second thought, I saw a few problems\nwith this schema. For one thing, I'm pretty sure there aren't supposed to\nbe any demons in Purgatory, even just visiting. For another, Purgatory is a\ntemporary abode for souls, but the Bluvians aren't going anywhere: even if\nthey repair more landers, once the Whorl has left they have no prospect of\ninterstellar flight. Finally, the Whorl, with its decaying infrastructure\nand civic unrest is hardly heavenly.\n\nSo it occurred to me: if the inhumi are demons, perhaps Blue and Green are\nboth Hell, with Blue being the upper circles and Green the lower circles, so\nto speak. On this reading, Silk's coming to and departure from Blue would\ncorrespond to the Harrowing of Hell, when Christ after his resurrection\ndescended to Hell and brought some Old Testament figures, who had all been\nin Hell up to that point, up to Heaven. So Silk's companions on the boat\nwould be those worthy of being saved. (Seawrack's presence seems\nincongruous from this perspective, but Dante, at least, put Eve in Heaven.)\nAnd poor Hide, Hoof, Daisy and Vadsig would be damned, along with the rest\nof the Bluvians.\n\nHow's that for a depressing reading?\n\n--Adam" } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Alice K. Turner", "address": "aturner6 at nyc.rr.com" }, "date": "2002-05-23T21:38:00+00:00", "subject": "Re: (urth) Blue is Hell!", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "No, Adam, I don't think Blue and Green are Hell or Purgatory. I think Wolfe\ncontemplated a \"what if?\" pair of worlds where mythological spirits and\npersonages that Catholics are still taught to believe in are real, and\ncolonizing humans must cope as best they can. Having come up with Quetzal\nand his ilk (he may not yet have thought of the ilk when he first limned\nQuetzal, a terrific character), he then devised angel figures, the Neighbors\n(and in the Bible, too, angels are much more elusive creatures than demons),\nand a saint struggling literally with his own humanity but also able to\nperform miracles. Now let's see, how can I (Wolfe) put this into sfal terms?\nIt's a good concept and on that level not a bad working-out; throw in the\nMother as Rahab, or Tiamat left over from an older religion, and Seawrack\nfrom legend--a terrible temptation to sin in spite of herself. (Or is she\ncannier than we know?)\n\nAdam, I agree with you about the slap-dashery of these books, and have said\nso before. (Of the three, IGJ was the one I liked best when first reading\nit.) But the reason I'll stick with my Biblical reading is that for me it\nworks. Catholic mythology--doctrine, I guess, they call it--explains a lot\nof things here. Some (not all) of the mess comes from the attempt to tie the\nwhole huge machine of 11 books in three series conceived at different times\nfor different reasons together. It's like Windows!\n\n-alga" } ] } ] }