{ "export": { "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/3751", "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": 3751, "subject": "Castaway", "messages": 3, "voices": 2, "first": "2003-01-10T09:09:12+00:00", "last": "2003-02-21T23:46:36+00:00" }, "messages": [ { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Nicholas Gevers", "address": "vermoulian at yahoo.com" }, "date": "2003-01-10T09:09:14+00:00", "subject": "(urth) Castaway", "in_reply_to": null, "reply_link": null, "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "SPOILER SPACE\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nRich Horton re \"Castaway\": \n\n\"Do you think the world was actually Earth? Or was\nthe castaway remembering lost Earth somehow?\"\n\nThe world was Earth, I'm pretty sure--in a sense, Urth\npost Ragnarok. I think your comparison with Tiptree is\nwell founded--the theme here is very much alienation\nfrom Mother Earth, only this time with humanity\nsurviving, Earth dying. Interesting to consider who\nthe Castaway really is--the shipwreck victim, or the\nnarrator, and with the narrator, the entire human\nspecies?\n\n--Nick Gevers." } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Nicholas Gevers", "address": "vermoulian at yahoo.com" }, "date": "2003-01-10T09:09:12+00:00", "subject": "(urth) Castaway", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "SPOILER SPACE\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nRich Horton re \"Castaway\": \n\n\"Do you think the world was actually Earth? Or was\nthe castaway remembering lost Earth somehow?\"\n\nThe world was Earth, I'm pretty sure--in a sense, Urth\npost Ragnarok. I think your comparison with Tiptree is\nwell founded--the theme here is very much alienation\nfrom Mother Earth, only this time with humanity\nsurviving, Earth dying. Interesting to consider who\nthe Castaway really is--the shipwreck victim, or the\nnarrator, and with the narrator, the entire human\nspecies?\n\n--Nick Gevers." } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "mournings glory", "address": "mourningsglory at hotmail.com" }, "date": "2003-02-21T23:46:36+00:00", "subject": "(urth) Castaway", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Hello all.\n\nDelurking just long enough to post my own deranged thoughts about Wolfe's \n\"Castaway.\"\n\nIs it just me or was anyone else bothered that the only named characters in \nthe story have decidedly non-futuristic names? There are Yarmouths and \nOberts in my local phone directory (well, actually Oberst, but close \nenough), and yet we're meant to believe that the story takes place in the \nfar future, when the sun is dying. Surely, Wolfe, whose naming conventions \nare usually brilliant, could have come up with less modern-sounding names.\n\nAtrothers, on the other hand, seems pure Wolfean. I'm speculating that it \nderives from the Latin \"atrox\" (horrible, abominable, fierce, savage, \nunrelenting; \"atrox\" also being closely related etymologically to \"ater,\" \ndead black, malevolent). \"Others,\" of course, means, well, others, \npresumably here aliens or non-natives; but notice how Wolfe uses the word \nthe lone time it's mentioned: \"We got hit by the Atrothers.\" For some \nreason, when I first read this, my mind flashed back to the anthrax attacks \nthat took place shortly after 9/11--probably because \"horrible black \ncreatures\" connotes for me the anthrax bacillus, and the similarities of \natrox/anthrax. And then I began to wonder: could \"Castaway\" actually be Gene \nWolfe's fictionalizied account of an immune system response to \nviral/bacterial/\"alien\" invasion? Sort of the sfnal version of \"Osmosis \nJones'?\n\nConsider the following bits of evidence:\n\n\"The sun was red and real close, but there didn't seem to be a lot if heat \nin it\" This could be the heart, either no longer beating or severely \ncompromised because of toxins in the bloodstream. Blood also orbits the \nheart.\n\nThe years-being-shorter-now may refer to cells that are still attempting to \nthrive in an essentially dying or dead body. (I assume that bone marrow \nproduces blood cells for at least some while after death--probably until the \ntemperature cools or circulatory stagnation. And \"years\" of course is a \nrelative term--the life/reproductive cycle of a cell, therefore allowing the \nwoman to be \"millions and millions of years old\".)\n\nGiven Wolfe's religious views, the \"woman\" discussed by the castaway (who's \nalso very definitely \"sick\") may well represent the soul, who is able to \ncommunicate with her would-be rescuer various, if obviously more corporal, \njoys: the descant of birds, autumn's foliage, etc., etc.\n\nEverything in the ship is white, signifying the leucocytes of the immune \nresponse, which seem \"to just suck the color out of everything *except* \nblood.\" The castaway, since he retains color, may be a red blood cell or \nsomething equivalent to a platelet, or enzymatic thrombin.\n\nAnd lastly, the \"things inside her, eating the corpse\" are lysosomes--which \neventually digest all dead cells.\n\nAll right, it's a goofy idea, but I thought I'd toss it out anyway.\n\n(My vironese nickname and its abbreviation may well make me both fem and \nchem. Daresay, I've been called worse.)\n\nmsg" } ] } ] }