{
  "export": {
    "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/4801",
    "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": 4801,
    "subject": "Similarities between TWK and \"Golden City Far\"",
    "messages": 1,
    "voices": 1,
    "first": "2007-03-29T14:20:14+00:00",
    "last": "2007-03-29T14:20:14+00:00"
  },
  "messages": [
    {
      "message_id": "<190916.37240.qm@web54406.mail.yahoo.com>",
      "from": {
        "name": "Nathan Spears",
        "address": "spearofsolomon at yahoo.com"
      },
      "date": "2007-03-29T14:20:14+00:00",
      "subject": "(urth) Similarities between TWK and \"Golden City Far\"",
      "in_reply_to": null,
      "reply_link": null,
      "blocks": [
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "In reply to a very old message (because I just read Golden City Far for the first time):\n\nI felt that the similarities between TWK and \"Golden City Far\" were actually intended to draw my attention to the differences between them.\n\nFor instance, in the Wizard Knight the protagonist is transformed externally from a boy into a man very rapidly, and in \"GCF\" he is transformed internally from a boy into a man.  That description seems loaded - let me try once more.  In TWK, Able experiences the effects of rapid aging superficially, where in GCF the boy experiences them non-superficially.  One grows bodily, the other grows mentally.  The boy in GCF (whose name I can't remember) also grows stronger, but apparently in such a manner that no one notices a change in his appearance (witness the bullying and the encounter with the coach).\n\nAlso, in TWK, Able is on a quest, but the destination is Platonic in a sense - his ultimate goal is to become A Knight.  In GCF, the destination is actually physical, the titular Golden City.\n\nLooking for these differences many of the details in GCF seem point/counterpoint to TWK - the sword in TWK augments Able's power, in GCF the protag gives the sword power.  In TWK Gylf uses human speech; in GCF the protag learns to hear dog speech.\n\nI feel like Wolfe wanted to tell TWK with all the main details inverted.\n\n----- Original Message ----\nFrom: Roy C. Lackey <rclackey at stic.net>\nTo: Dustin Frost <djakfrost at gmail.com>; The Urth Mailing List <urth-urth.net at lists.urth.net>\nSent: Wednesday, July 20, 2005 11:51:54 PM\nSubject: Re: (urth) Similarities between TWK and \"Golden City Far\""
        },
        {
          "kind": "quote",
          "depth": 2,
          "text": "Dustin Frost wrote:\nAnyway, the similarities are too many to be coincidence. Is \"Golden City\nFar\" the extract version (like condensed, but moreso)? Was it a jumping off\npoint for TWK? Is there any relation to Castleview? Or am I just reading too\nmuch into it?<<"
        },
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "I hadn't read the story before, but now that I have I agree that the\ncorrespondence with TWK is striking. Still, I don't believe the works are\nrelated; that is, I don't believe the \"dream\" world entered into by Bill is\nthe same world as that entered into by Art in TWK. GW may have been riffing\noff one of his own ideas when he wrote the short story, which was\ncopyrighted in 2004. The story is also like CASTLEVIEW in so far as the\nsupernatural elements intrude into our \"real\" world.\n\nWhat might be profitable to pursue are the stages whereby Bill, like Art, is\ntransformed, with very little effort on his part, from a nondescript\nfifteen-year-old student into a Hero. The personages he encounters in the\nprocess might also inform the relationships Art makes with similar\ncharacters along the way in TWK. Then again, maybe not. Could Gylf talk for\nthe same reason that Shep could? I don't know, but I doubt it.\n\nWelcome to the list.\n\n-Roy"
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
}