{
  "export": {
    "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/37",
    "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": 37,
    "subject": "Early Urth",
    "messages": 1,
    "voices": 1,
    "first": "1997-05-16T14:10:43+00:00",
    "last": "1997-05-16T14:10:43+00:00"
  },
  "messages": [
    {
      "message_id": "<urth-v0001-0058@digest.urth.net>",
      "from": {
        "name": "Joel Priddy",
        "address": "jpriddy at saturn.vcu.edu"
      },
      "date": "1997-05-16T14:10:43+00:00",
      "subject": "(urth) Early Urth",
      "in_reply_to": null,
      "reply_link": null,
      "blocks": [
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "mantis say:"
        },
        {
          "kind": "quote",
          "depth": 2,
          "text": "Slow down a second.  You've truncated my point: I didn't write\n\"earliest days of the White Fountain,\" I wrote \"earliest days of\nWhite Fountain =starlight= on Urth.\"  You apprehend the\ndifference, don't you? <<"
        },
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "Yes, I do, and didn't mean to misquote you. I was just having\ntrouble with my editor, so I couldn't quote you directly. But now\nthat I'm thinking of it, here's a question regarding the\nstarlight... Doesn't Severian find that his star is invisible\nfrom outside Dis' orbit when he disembarks from Tzadkiels ship?\nThis is presumably centuries before the Apu-Incident. Is it just\nthat a minute amount of starlight, less than the human eye can\npick up is hitting the Urth? But doesn't he see his star with his\neyes when he's Apu? Was his star blocked in the former case? By\nthe object that caused the eclipse? And Severians connection to\nhis other self in the form of the White Fountain... does this\n\"sympathy\" work at lightspeed, or is it instantaneous?\n\nmantis say:"
        },
        {
          "kind": "quote",
          "depth": 2,
          "text": "Re: \"The earliest days of the White Fountain's existence\nstretch back"
        },
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "to the earliest days of humans on Urth\"--does the text support\nthis\nclaim?  I can see where Famulimus says, \"Thus surprised are we,\nSeverian, to find you here where men have scarce begun\" (V, ch. ,\np.354).  Is that the quote that informed you?<<\n\nYes, this is the quote I was referring to.\n\nmantis say:"
        },
        {
          "kind": "quote",
          "depth": 2,
          "text": "\"Here where men have scarce begun\" can be taken in many ways:"
        },
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "scarce begun civilization, for one example.<<\n\nYes, I had taken the quote to refer to the earliest days of\ncivilization. I think (and I'm real shakey on this one) that\nsomeone, maybe the Hierodules talking to Severian in their\nstateroom, made a distinction between humans as they are then and\nhumans when they were little more than beasts. I'm not being much\nhelp to myself by stubbornly refusing to remember the quote, but\nit's phrasing led me to believe that the speaker was referrring\nto a distinction within homo sapiens sapiens. \n\nmantis say:"
        },
        {
          "kind": "quote",
          "depth": 2,
          "text": "FWIW, I have a few factoids that point to that scene taking\nplace in"
        },
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "Cuzco, South America circa AD 1200.  Of course, this is obviously\nbased upon the perhaps fatally flawed viewpoint that Urth is\nliterally an evolved form of Earth after a period of less than\none million years from today!<<\n\nIt's certainly built, whole-cloth, from meso-american culture,\nalthough I, personally, didn't take that to mean that it was meso-america any\nmore than I took the language precedent to what Severian spoke to\nactually be Latin. BTW, the structure that Severian built... was\nit a dome of true arches, or stepped arches? I believe the\npre-Columbian cultures had the latter, but not the former.\n\n\nMantis conclude:"
        },
        {
          "kind": "quote",
          "depth": 2,
          "text": "(BTW, didn't Ranjit have a separate place for"
        },
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "people to list Wolfe-ish books?)<<\n\nOops, is there? Sorry about that, then. But just one quick\nquestion before the posting-police descend upon my head: Are the\nHarrison books good? Do you recommend them?\n\n-cephalothorax-\n(whose penchant for misspelling sometimes even extends to his own\nname)"
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
}