{
  "export": {
    "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/3293",
    "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": 3293,
    "subject": "5HC and TBOTSS",
    "messages": 1,
    "voices": 1,
    "first": "2002-06-02T14:10:02+00:00",
    "last": "2002-06-02T14:10:02+00:00"
  },
  "messages": [
    {
      "message_id": "<urth-v0206-1162@digest.urth.net>",
      "from": {
        "name": "Adam Stephanides",
        "address": "adamsteph at earthlink.net"
      },
      "date": "2002-06-02T14:10:02+00:00",
      "subject": "(urth) 5HC and TBOTSS",
      "in_reply_to": null,
      "reply_link": null,
      "blocks": [
        {
          "kind": "quote",
          "depth": 1,
          "text": "on 5/30/02 12:40 PM, Michael Andre-Driussi at mantis at siriusfiction.com\nwrote:\niirc, when Gene Wolfe told me, in person, about his plan\nto do a trilogy called \"The Book of the Short Sun,\" he said specificly that\nit would be in the hard-on-the-reader style of 5HC."
        },
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "[snip]"
        },
        {
          "kind": "quote",
          "depth": 1,
          "text": "We see today arguments over 5HC, a work published decades ago.  Many of the\nsame negative things said about 5HC seem to be said about the much more\nrecent/less digested TBOTSS as well.  Readers who dislike one or the other\nor both feel that it is pointlessly complicated; that Wolfe is finally\ncheating; that things don't add up; that solid, non-fuzzy solutions cannot\nbe sorted out; et cetera.  It might be that in general the same root\nproblems between these texts and their grumpy readers are the same."
        },
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "Hmm, I don't actually recall people making these complaints about 5HC in the\nrecent discussion.  The most I remember is some people saying they didn't\nreally see the connections between the three parts of 5HC, but I don't\nrecall anyone disliking it to the extent that some of us dislike TBOTSS.  (I\nshould probably go back and reread all the posts, but as alga said, it's too\nmuch trouble.)\n\nI can see clear similarities in narrative techniques between 5HC and TBOTSS.\nBoth have several narrators, one of whom is not who he seems to be at first;\nboth contain a section(s) which at first glance seems an objective\nthird-person narrative, but upon inspection proves to be a reconstruction of\nuncertain evidential value.  I think these aspects of TBOTSS succeed.\n\nBut apart from this (and from the obvious motifs they share), I don't see\nmuch likeness between the two works.  5HC is tightly constructed; and I\nwould maintain that it actually gives us all, or almost all, the information\nwe need (once we realize that incomprehension and misapprehension are major\nthemes of the book, and that the abos as a presence in the minds of Marsch,\nVictor and the colonists are far more significant than the \"truth\" about the\nabos).  Neither of these is true for TBOTSS.  Nor does 5HC contain the long\ntedious stretches that TBOTSS does; or suffer from the failings in\ncharacterization that Allan Lloyd, alga and others have pointed out in\nTBOTSS; or suffer from Wolfe's failure to make the pulp-derived elements of\nTBOTSS plausible.\n\nTo be sure, it's always prudent to give Wolfe the benefit of the doubt, and\nI may be led to change my mind about TBOTSS later.  But that doesn't alter\nmy current opinion.\n\n--Adam"
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
}