{ "export": { "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/3416", "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": 3416, "subject": "PEACE: Coldhouse prank, facts and function", "messages": 4, "voices": 3, "first": "2002-08-20T22:48:34+00:00", "last": "2002-08-21T14:30:52+00:00" }, "messages": [ { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Michael Andre-Driussi", "address": "mantis at siriusfiction.com" }, "date": "2002-08-20T22:48:34+00:00", "subject": "(urth) PEACE: Coldhouse prank, facts and function", "in_reply_to": null, "reply_link": null, "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "1) At first Weer seems disturbed that French would tell the reporter about\nthe prank (and we assume we know why: because it is bad news, however old),\nand French's explanation of his motive makes sense for French's frame of\nreference (1974 or thereabouts), but Weer still seems a bit . . . haunted.\n\n2) Does Weer's haunted state require that he be the prankster? No, of\ncourse not: anybody can be frightened of seeing a ghost, not just the\nmurderer.\n\n3) And if Charlie Turner is a \"unicorn\" who came through the barriers, and\ndeep down Weer knows Charlie is a fiction-come-to-life, then we have a\nwonderful chain about the objective reality of forgeries (Venus of Milo;\nLou Gold's books; Tilly's freaks; even Quantrill's tryst with Kate?)\nmeeting up with the oft-repeated \"summoning ghosts by speaking of them\"\nthread of PEACE . . . meaning that, even if Weer knows that the prank is a\nlegend, he is also aware that in the memory mansion when one speaks of a\ncharacter (as Weer was trying to tell Bill Baton about the Tilly story) a\ncharacter can suddenly appear, even if it is a person Weer never really met\nin his mortal life, even if it is a person who never really existed outside\nof a story. To talk of it is to call it up in the place where Weer is.\n\n4) The joke is on Weer, however, since on one level I hope we can all\nagree on (and we've gone over this before), Weer himself is a ghost\nhaunting the coldhouse. To have a ghost frightened of meeting a ghost in a\nhaunted place is pretty funny, and it may show a lot about Weer's\nresistance to the idea that he is really and truly dead (not the last man\non Earth, not a senile man wandering in a ruin, not a boy dreaming, nor any\nof the other explanations).\n\n=mantis=" } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Dan'l Danehy-Oakes", "address": "ddanehy at siebel.com" }, "date": "2002-08-20T23:04:59+00:00", "subject": "RE: (urth) PEACE: Coldhouse prank, facts and function", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "4) The joke is on Weer, however, since on one level I hope we can all\nagree on (and we've gone over this before), Weer himself is a ghost\nhaunting the coldhouse. " }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "All but the last three words. Why there? Not \"why\" as in \"why would he \nbe there,\" but \"why\" as in \"what, in the text, supports the conclusion\nthat this is where Weer's ghost is hanging out?\"" } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Michael Andre-Driussi", "address": "mantis at siriusfiction.com" }, "date": "2002-08-21T00:24:54+00:00", "subject": "RE: (urth) PEACE: Coldhouse prank, facts and function", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "quote", "depth": 2, "text": "4) The joke is on Weer, however, since on one level I hope we can all\nagree on (and we've gone over this before), Weer himself is a ghost\nhaunting the coldhouse." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "All but the last three words. Why there? Not \"why\" as in \"why would he\nbe there,\" but \"why\" as in \"what, in the text, supports the conclusion\nthat this is where Weer's ghost is hanging out?\"" }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "How about \"haunting the coldhouse (of the non-corporeal memory mansion that\nWeer inhabits, if not all the time, at the very least, during the\nframetale)\"?\n\n(Though I suppose one might argue that, via the \"room\" Weer has entered the\nactual timeline of reality . . . but such reasoning would seem to play hell\nwith the idea of Charlie Turner being a unicorn, since Bill Baton saw him,\nand Miss Birkhead saw him, too . . . so unless Baton and Birkhead are being\npuppetized, doing things they didn't really do in real life, then maybe\nCharlie is real, his visit is real, and only his Doris letter is a unicorn?)\n\nI certainly did =not= mean: \"Weer is the ghost starring in the story of the\ncoldhouse prank (about a young man who died in 1938)\"! I apologize if it\nwas taken that way.\n\n=mantis=" } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Roy C. Lackey", "address": "rclackey at stic.net" }, "date": "2002-08-21T14:30:52+00:00", "subject": "Re: (urth) PEACE: Coldhouse prank, facts and function", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "mantis wrote:\n(Though I suppose one might argue that, via the \"room\" Weer has entered the\nactual timeline of reality . . . but such reasoning would seem to play hell\nwith the idea of Charlie Turner being a unicorn, since Bill Baton saw him,\nand Miss Birkhead saw him, too . . . so unless Baton and Birkhead are being\npuppetized, doing things they didn't really do in real life, then maybe\nCharlie is real, his visit is real, and only his Doris letter is a\nunicorn?)" }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Other characters are being \"puppetized\", to the extent that words are being\nput into their mouths by frametale-Weer that could not possibly have been\nuttered by them in real life. In addition to Sherry's noncommittal response\nto Weer's comment about the stroke he hadn't had in real life, there is the\nbusiness with Lois questioning Weer's having given her a future phone\nnumber, sans exchange letters, and his telling her that he had been waiting\nfor her at his desk (and he was, so to speak--in the frametale) when in real\nlife he had waited in his car. She asked if he meant he had propped a book\nagainst the steering wheel. Such comments would never have been made by her\nin real life. And, of course, the entire conversation 4-year-old Den had\nwith Dr. Black never happened outside of the frametale. Parts of Weer's\nvisit(s) with Dr. Van Ness contain dialogue that never happened except in\nthe memory mansion.\n\nThere's no doubting that Weer just made up stuff and wrote it down as truth,\nas I've just shown. The question remains: how much of what he \"wrote down\"\ndidn't really happen quite that way, or didn't happen at all? Part of the\nanswer has to do with why he was writing and who he was writing for. Was he\nwriting for himself? God? For therapy? Penance? Other?\n\n-Roy" } ] } ] }