{
  "export": {
    "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/3877",
    "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": 3877,
    "subject": "various miscellany",
    "messages": 1,
    "voices": 1,
    "first": "2003-03-06T06:28:07+00:00",
    "last": "2003-03-06T06:28:07+00:00"
  },
  "messages": [
    {
      "message_id": "<urth-v0303-3019@digest.urth.net>",
      "from": {
        "name": "Lisa Schaffer-Doggett",
        "address": "harlekin at earthlink.net"
      },
      "date": "2003-03-06T06:28:07+00:00",
      "subject": "(urth) various miscellany",
      "in_reply_to": null,
      "reply_link": null,
      "blocks": [
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "Hi everyone, Don here.  I'm back from a long hiatus and I thought I'd \nthrow out a few odds and ends in no particular order of importance.  \nFirst in my head, first from my fingers.  Does Typhon recognize \nSeverian when they meet  in Sword of the Lictor?  I think it's a pretty \nsure yes:\n\t' \"The Conciliator,\" I said . . .\n\t\"Yes, that was one of his names.  Do you know where he is now?\"\n\t\"He has been dead for many chiliads.\"\n\t\"And yet he remains, I think?\"'\nIn the context of the paragraph (and on a second reading of the books) \nTyphon is obviously toying with Sev. and feeling him out to see if he \nreally doesn't realize that they've met before. IMO of course.\n\nSecond.  \"Green is Urth.\"  Is it a joke?  Well, maybe it is, but \nsometimes the best way to hide the truth is in a joke.  Here's another \njoke if Green is Urth:  Wolfe has gone from a moon made out of green \ncheese to a blue moon.  Don't underestimate the power of the pun.  But \nmore significantly, if Blue is Lune then it makes perfect sense why the \nMother is there.  The moon is the provenance of the Goddess.  And \nanother thing that I must address:  Green is not \"Hell\".  Blue is.  \nLook beyond the superficialities of climate.  Every place on Blue, \nwithout exception, that the narrator visits is beset with some \ncombination of lawlessness, slavery, warfare, corruption, dishonesty, \nor violence.  Every one.  Now let's go to Green, and Sinew's village.  \nThe visitors (Silkhorn and Jahlee and whoever else) are welcomed, \ncautiously but courteously, and not imprisoned.  They find a thriving \nand fairly harmonious society, where Sinew's second in command is a \nTrivigaunti!  It's not perfect but it's certainly not hell.  In fact, \nit's probably a Green man's paradise.\n\nThird.  I've (finally!) finished reading The White Goddess.  I have \nnever found myself obsessed with a particular author before, but Graves \nis insanely incredible.  Even if everything in that book is \nhistorically incorrect it is still a work of absolute genius and even \nmore remarkable in it's creativity.  But man, it's a slow read.  Still \nI urge anyone interested in going down Wolfe's rabbit hole to read it.  \nWhen Wolfe isn't using its ideas to his own end, he's often reacting \nand replying to them.\n\nThird and a half.  While reading The White Goddess, I came across this \npassage and I started thinking about the mechanics of the New Sun.  By \nthat I mean Severian is himself, the man, but he is also the literal \nNew Sun, the white fountain.  How does this happen, other than Tzadkiel \nsnapping his fingers and saying it's so.  Well, I've found an \ninteresting possibility, as far fetched and unlikely as it may seem, \neven to me.   It's on pp. 480-81 of TWG:\n\"A New Zealand atomic scientist assured me the other day that \nChristianity had received it's heaviest blow in 1945:  a fundamental \ntenet of the Church, namely that Jesus's material body was \nimmaterialized  at the Ascension had, he said, been spectacularly \ndisproved at Hiroshima and Nagasaki - anyone with the least scientific \nperception must realize that any such break-down of matter would have \ncaused an explosion large enough to wreck the entire Middle East.\"\nCould it cause a release of energy large enough to create a white \nfountain?  Any takers for the pros or the cons?\n\nThanks for your time.\nDon Doggett"
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
}