{
  "export": {
    "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/3459",
    "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": 3459,
    "subject": "MICHAELMAS, another thread of Budrys in Urth",
    "messages": 1,
    "voices": 1,
    "first": "2002-09-21T23:55:24+00:00",
    "last": "2002-09-21T23:55:24+00:00"
  },
  "messages": [
    {
      "message_id": "<urth-v0209-1757@digest.urth.net>",
      "from": {
        "name": "Michael Andre-Driussi",
        "address": "mantis at siriusfiction.com"
      },
      "date": "2002-09-21T23:55:24+00:00",
      "subject": "(urth) MICHAELMAS, another thread of Budrys in Urth",
      "in_reply_to": null,
      "reply_link": null,
      "blocks": [
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "I've just read Algis J. Budrys' novel MICHAELMAS [1976].  I have previously\nread ROGUE MOON, THE THORN OF AMSIR [iirc], SOME WILL NOT DIE, FALLING\nTORCH, and HARD LANDING.  I haven't read WHO? but I know about it: the case\nof a guy who suffered an accident and has been repaired as a cyborg,\nraising questions as to his identity (and possibly his humanity).  ROGUE\nMOON is all about the teleported astronaut working his way through a deadly\nalien labyrinth, knowing that the original he is based on was destroyed by\nthe scanning process.\n\nMICHAELMAS approaches some of this material again: there is a wounded\nastronaut, presumed dead, who might be real or might be fake (clone,\nreconstruction); there is Michaelmas himself, the ace-reporter and secretly\nthe most wired man in the world, with his secret AI program making magic\nhappen via the internet; there is the female reporter who looks and acts\ndisturbingly like Michaelmas' dead wife, which might be just chance, or the\nfact that she spent time in a world-famous clinic in Switzerland.  To me it\nis a Brunner big novel with some Ballardian elements and some PK Dick\nangles all in a short novel form.\n\nIn CASTLE OF DAYS article \"Algis Budrys II,\" Gene Wolfe writes that\nMICHAELMAS is Gene's favorite Budrys novel.  He also notes that while\nfriends call Budrys 'A.J.,' \"though _A_ and _J_ may not be his true\ninitials.\"\n\nAnyway, BIG SPOILERS for MICHAELMAS:\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nIn the end, the clinic in the Alps basically has a presence chamber which\ncan draw analogs from alternate universes.  Like Niven's \"All the Myriad\nWays,\" but this dingus, operated by distant alien entities that experience\none of their afternoons in Earth decades, can pull an entity from its home\nuniverse and put it into ours (if I understand it correctly).  So the\nastronaut really did die in our world, but the  human conspirators fed\nmedia files on the guy into the dingus and the aliens fished up his analog\nand made him appear in the manifestor device.\n\nAnd the human conspirators are trying to draw up a Michaelmas analog -- in\nfact, it is in the manifestor device and banging to be let out, but then\nMichaelmas makes them send it back.\n\nBeyond all the main action there is a haunting bit at the end in that\nMichaelmas suspects (I think) that the female reporter, therefore, really\n=is= an analog of his dead wife, rather than being a cosmetic forgery (of\nthe conspirators) or a pure coincidence.\n\nThe wounded astronaut (WHO? and ROGUE MOON and MICHAELMAS) would be\ntranslated on Urth as crippled sailor, pointing to Jonas.  The teleporting\nof the astronaut in both MICHAELMAS and ROGUE MOON point to the same for\nJonas.  The hidden/uncertain identity, clearly.  The haunting love interest\ncomplicated by teleporters in MICHAELMAS (with maybe a tad of this in ROGUE\nMOON, iirc?) also links to Jonas. (The mysterious aliens who think the\nwhole thing is just a parlor trick and experience time-flow at a different\nrate than Earth seems like a solid starting point for the denizens of\nYesod.)\n\nAnd not the least, Jonas is the middle name of Budrys, the \"J\" of \"A.J.\"\n\n=mantis=\n\n\nSirius Fiction\nbooklets on Gene Wolfe, John Crowley\n29 copies of \"Snake's-hands\" until OP!\nhttp://www.siriusfiction.com/"
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
}