{
  "export": {
    "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/4871",
    "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": 4871,
    "subject": "\"Unrequited Love\", take two",
    "messages": 1,
    "voices": 1,
    "first": "2007-07-03T06:48:51+00:00",
    "last": "2007-07-03T06:48:51+00:00"
  },
  "messages": [
    {
      "message_id": "<000c01c7bd3e$3a7ad920$cac95a42@rclackey.stic.net>",
      "from": {
        "name": "Roy C. Lackey",
        "address": "rclackey at stic.net"
      },
      "date": "2007-07-03T06:48:51+00:00",
      "subject": "(urth) \"Unrequited Love\", take two",
      "in_reply_to": null,
      "reply_link": null,
      "blocks": [
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "I've read this story several more times, and I may well be wrong in thinking\nthat the narrator is an over-the-hill robot boy. There are a few details\nthat make more sense if he is a mature human male. However, I can find\nnothing to suggest that Julianne's parents are robots. In fact, in a\nhuman-engineered society where human children seem to be at a premium, I\nvery much doubt that robot couples would be allowed to foster human\nchildren, even if robot couples even existed, a proposition for which I can\nsee no justification in the story.\n\nBut for use of the plural-possessive pronoun \"our\", referring to the\nnarrator's back yard, we might suppose that he lived alone. He makes no\nspecific mention of another person or persons in his house, other than to\nstate that there are no children in it. The most logical assumption is that\nhe has a wife and that, like the Robinsons, they are either unable or\nunwilling to have children, which is why he could not blame them for being\nin the same situation he was in. But he could -- and probably did -- blame\nthem for acquiring a robot child, just as he later became incensed when he\nlearned that Julianne's parents were getting her a robot dog in reaction to\nthe robot girl getting a real dog.\n\nDespite the fact that most houses in the neighborhood housed no real\nchildren, robot children did not dominate. There were three robot children\nin Roberta's first-grade class and seven human children, of which five of\nthe latter group were boys. If Julianne's best friend was a new(*) robot,\nthat says more about her than it does Roberta or the society she lives in.\nSadness is a part of the human condition, whatever its cause(s). Julianne\nhad the opportunity to make friends with the other six human classmates\nbefore Roberta ever came on the scene, but she didn't, for whatever reason.\n(Part of her sadness may stem from being made to feel stupid relative to the\nobviously much more knowledgeable robot children, who are in school only to\nconform with their owner's fantasies.)\n\nRover instinctively understood that Robber was a thing, not a dog. It is\nunclear, however, that six-year-old Julianne realized that Roberta was a\nmere robot.\n\nIs there any significance to Wolfe's use of the British spelling of \"grey\"?\n\n[(*) It took me several readings before the point of Roberta's \"little\nlaptop in a shiny new bag\" struck me. The first time the narrator saw\nRoberta was on her way to school in **May**, near the end of the school\nyear, not the beginning. Apparently, Roberta hadn't been around in April.]\n\n-Roy"
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
}