{
  "export": {
    "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/3370",
    "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": 3370,
    "subject": "Thou Spark of Blood [SPOILERS]",
    "messages": 1,
    "voices": 1,
    "first": "2002-07-18T20:14:28+00:00",
    "last": "2002-07-18T20:14:28+00:00"
  },
  "messages": [
    {
      "message_id": "<urth-v0207-1439@digest.urth.net>",
      "from": {
        "name": "Michael Andre-Driussi",
        "address": "mantis at siriusfiction.com"
      },
      "date": "2002-07-18T20:14:28+00:00",
      "subject": "(urth) Thou Spark of Blood [SPOILERS]",
      "in_reply_to": null,
      "reply_link": null,
      "blocks": [
        {
          "kind": "quote",
          "depth": 1,
          "text": "Nacre wrote:\nOr could you make the same observations about \"When I was\nMing the Merciless\" (which is so much easier to find)?  I\ncan't easily think of a story that treats the aspects of\n\"Spark\" that aren't similar to \"Ming\", (maybe \"The Other\nDead Man\" or \"Silhouette\", though the other point is more\ndifficult) but perhaps a good analogue will occur to you."
        },
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "O Nacre!  I would not have thought of pairing \"Spark\" and \"Ming\" (I had not\nyet paired it with any other story, which might be odd in itself -- don't I\nreflexively do that sort of thing?), but I can see how you did it.\nInteresting. \"The Other Dead Man\" and \"Silhouette,\" yes, but less, as you\nsuggest . . . was I thinking more along the lines of \"Redbeard\" (something\nneither psychological nor spaceship)?  But no, that's further than \"Ming,\"\nreally.  Can't leave out the mystery genre works by Wolfe, of course (in\ngeneral, since no specific story springs to mind).\n\nFirst I'd like to set the context of my reading: having recently read and\nre-read the earliest Wolfe stuff, my expectations were accordingly\ncalibrated downward; likewise, Wolfe said in some interview somewhere\nsomething disparaging about \"Spark,\" so I thought of it as probably his\nleast favorite.\n\nAll of the story's flaws are in the end, or so it seems to me.  Up to that\npoint it is pretty intense, surprisingly intense.  In an eyewitness way,\nwhere \"Ming\" is all being reported after the fact, iirc.  And \"Spark,\" a\nshort story, is almost shockingly graphic -- I cannot think of a similar\nWolfe story, except maybe the casual descriptions of torture in TBOTNS that\nturned away the faint of heart.  Such folk must STAY AWAY from \"Spark.\"\n\nSo anyway, I find it flawed but very interesting, probably more memorable\nto me than \"The Blue Mouse\" or \"King Under the Mountain,\" or one that I\ncan't even recall enough to know that I can't remember it.  The nature of\nthe flaw is such that I can see why it has been passed over.\n\nYes, good call: it is like \"Ming\" but, imho, much more intense and graphic,\nwith Wolfe's mystery genre folded in, all packing a big punch for a rather\nshort story.\n\n(Hmmm, \"Hero as Werwolf\" has some of that . . . but no, the \"Ming\" context\nis completely lacking from \"Hero,\" which is more like hierarchies in\nNature's food pyramid . . . )\n\n=mantis="
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
}