{
  "export": {
    "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/3387",
    "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": 3387,
    "subject": "The Great Keinplatz Experiment",
    "messages": 1,
    "voices": 1,
    "first": "2002-07-30T20:23:07+00:00",
    "last": "2002-07-30T20:23:07+00:00"
  },
  "messages": [
    {
      "message_id": "<urth-v0207-1489@digest.urth.net>",
      "from": {
        "name": "Nigel Price",
        "address": "nigel.a.price at virgin.net"
      },
      "date": "2002-07-30T20:23:07+00:00",
      "subject": "(urth) The Great Keinplatz Experiment",
      "in_reply_to": null,
      "reply_link": null,
      "blocks": [
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "In his short story \"The Great Keinplatz Experiment\", Sir Arthur Conan Doyle\ndeals, albeit factiously, with one of the themes which is central to Wolfe's\nBook of the Short Sun, namely the transference of human spirits and\npersonalities.\n\nIn the story, which appears to be set in the nineteenth century, a German\nprofessor conducts a public experiment with himself and one of his rakish\nyoung students as the subjects. The idea is that the professor will\nhypnotise his student using \"mesmerism\" so that the student's spirit will be\nfree to leave its body. The professor will then hypnotise himself so that\nhis spirit can interrogate that of the student to ascertain what the spirit\nexperiences when disembodied in this fashion.\n\nIn the event, the experiment goes wrong, in that when the two spirits return\nto their bodies, the student's spirit ends up in the professor's body and\nvice versa. Niether spirit is initially aware of the transferrence and\nsupposedly hillarious consequences ensue as the professor's body acts like\nthe rowdy student while the sober spirit of the poor professor, ignorrant\nthat it inhabits the body of the student, cannot understand why he is\ntreated so disrespectfully and contemptuously by his friends and family.\nEventually, the professor and student meet again and repeat the original\nexperiment, albeit this time in private, thereby restoring their spirits to\ntheir proper bodies.\n\nCertainly not a close parallel with TBotSS, and I'm not suggesting Conan\nDoyle's story as a \"source\" for Wolfe's book or any such thing, but it is\ninteresting to find a treatment of this theme in an author whom Wolfe openly\nadmires and whom he has on occasion pastiched. The common elements are the\ntransferrence of spirits and the ignorrance of the spirits as to the fact\nthat they are in different host bodies. Among the big differences between\nthe two stories, apart from the vast difference in tone, style, genre and\ncontext(!) are the fact that in Wolfe's story, the migrant spirit's original\nbody (Horn's) is dead, while the new host's body (Silk's) appears to contain\ntwo spirits, not one.\n\nI mention it for what it worth.\n\nNigel"
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
}