{
  "export": {
    "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/390",
    "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": 390,
    "subject": "\"Tracking Song\" redux",
    "messages": 2,
    "voices": 2,
    "first": "1998-03-01T17:51:00+00:00",
    "last": "1998-03-02T12:22:29+00:00"
  },
  "messages": [
    {
      "message_id": "<urth-v0007-0577@digest.urth.net>",
      "from": {
        "name": "m.driussi",
        "address": "m.driussi at genie.geis.com"
      },
      "date": "1998-03-01T17:51:00+00:00",
      "subject": "(urth) \"Tracking Song\" redux",
      "in_reply_to": null,
      "reply_link": null,
      "blocks": [
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "Reply:  Item #2256475 from URTH at LISTS.BEST.COM@INET#\n\nvizcacha,\n\nRe: \"Cutthoat as a dogman\"--it works for me (for whatever that's\nworth).\n\n=mantis="
        }
      ]
    },
    {
      "message_id": "<urth-v0007-0580@digest.urth.net>",
      "from": {
        "name": "Mark Millman",
        "address": "mark_millman at hmco.com"
      },
      "date": "1998-03-02T12:22:29+00:00",
      "subject": "Re: (urth) \"Tracking Song\" redux",
      "in_reply_to": "<urth-v0007-0577@digest.urth.net>",
      "reply_link": "subject",
      "blocks": [
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "It may be relevant to this discussion to note that Kipling wrote a book\ntitled, _Thy Servant, a Dog_, in which the Dog of the title refers to his\nmaster as \"Own God\" and to the mistress of the other dog in the household,\nSlippers, as \"Slippers' Own God--Missus\", and in which the other people and\nanimals of the household appear as characters (the Dog, for example, is at\none point taunted by the kitchen cat).  The book itself has been called\n\"one of the worst books ever perpetrated by a major writer\" (I regret to\nsay that I'm not sure who said it--it may have been Wolfe or it may not\nhave been, and I'm away from my library at the moment) but it has,\naccording to a friend of mine who has read it, its moments.  I haven't read\nit myself, so I don't know whether there may be any deeper resonances to be\nfound.\n\nMark Millman"
        },
        {
          "kind": "quote",
          "depth": 1,
          "text": "David Lebling wrote:\nWe had a long and very enlightening discussion of\n\"Tracking Song\" a few months ago.  I had a new\nthought about it last night, literally as I was lying in bed\nfalling asleep.\n\nI think the narrator is a dog, specifically a domestic\ndog who has fallen out of (or ejected from) the car\nhis humans are riding in. The fall gave him amnesia,\nfavored plot device of writers.  How can you tell he's\na dog?  He has the marks on his neck of a leash or\ncollar; a \"birthmark\" that goes \"from one side of the\nhair on the back of my neck to the other.\"  He only\ncomes up the shoulders of the Wiggikki, who are\nwolves (few dogs are as large as a wolf).  When he\nfinally meets the proprietors of the Great Sleigh, they\nare angels.  What dog owner is not an angel to his\ndog?\n\nOf course, I'm not saying the narrator _is_ a dog\nliterally, but in the same sense that the Wiggikki are\nwolves, and so forth.  The robots obey him because\nhe is \"human,\" not literally, but of all the human-like\nanimals they encounter, he is the most human; more\nhuman than Mantru, who is a-human or ex-human,\nmostly likely a homunculus (in the TBotNS sense).\nThe narrator does exactly what you would expect a\nloyal dog to do: find his masters again; though, being\na dog, he's distractable on the way. He eats the\nartificial food because it's what a dog raised on kibble\nwould be used to (the moral dimension aside).\n\nAgain, I'm not claiming this story is the dream of a dog,\nbut that that the narrator fills the dog's role in the story.\n\nWhat do you think?\n\n   -viz\n   (david_lebling at avid.com)"
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
}