{
  "export": {
    "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/5",
    "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": 5,
    "subject": "Jonas & black beans",
    "messages": 1,
    "voices": 1,
    "first": "1997-04-14T16:43:00+00:00",
    "last": "1997-04-14T16:43:00+00:00"
  },
  "messages": [
    {
      "message_id": "<urth-v0001-0006@digest.urth.net>",
      "from": {
        "name": "m.driussi",
        "address": "m.driussi at genie.com"
      },
      "date": "1997-04-14T16:43:00+00:00",
      "subject": "(urth) Jonas & black beans",
      "in_reply_to": null,
      "reply_link": null,
      "blocks": [
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "Reply:  Item #3929797 from URTH at LISTS.BEST.COM@INET00#\n\nRe: Nessus, fwiw I agree with much of what Scott Dalrymple writes.\nThat is to say, the great strength of alga's map is symbolic.  Having\nlooked into plate tectonics, I'm afraid the movements required for a\nliteral rendition are more imaginary than plausible (barring the crutch\nof \"terraforming\" which I myself use far too often <g>); and as Scott\npoints out so succinctly, landmarks like the Library of Alexandria\n(palace of Knossos, etc.) are already gone in our time.  So any\nreconstruction is just that--a reconstruction; and as such can happen\nanywhere on the globe.\n\nPart of the \"problem,\" such as there is, is that Wolfe is very sneaky\nand slippery.  In the interview with James B. Jordan (our Nutria),\nWolfe seems to be pretty clearly saying that Briah is in another\nuniverse than ours, that Urth is not our Earth.  But I'm pretty sure\nI can show you other interviews and Wolfe-written articles where\nWolfe says that the Commonwealth is in South America and Ascia is in\nNorth America; and in the appendices to TBOTNS Wolfe alludes to\nEarthbound buildings linking Earth to Urth; and in the text the\nastronaut on the Moon and missionaries in the jungle garden likewise\nlink Earth to Urth.\n\nAll of this means that in order to make a statement that isn't\ntoo nebulous, an essayist is going to have to focus on some points\nand ignore others.  The corollary being that the other readers can\npick up these ignored points to hurl at the essayist.\n\n(Scott: as for Urth \"flipped on her axis,\" I think it was more along\nthe lines of Urth flipping her magnetic poles, which would serve as a\ntime benchmark of some sort, since we do know--or profess to\nknow--that this has happened on Earth, and how often it tends to\nhappen.  It would be a benchmark if such a hint can be found in the\ntext.)\n\nNow then, here's a wish-list topic of my own:\n\nI want to know the rest of the story that Jonas was telling at the\nend of THE SHADOW OF THE TORTURER, the tale of a woman who went to\nthe stars and returned with some black beans.  I'd like any scraps:\nmotif index references, fairy tales, legends, myths, anything.  (To\nme it seems like a cross between the beginning of \"Jack and the\nBeanstalk\" and the ending of CAT'S CRADLE, and/or maybe the Sibyl\noffering her volumes of future history to the Roman Emperor.)\n\nI also want the name of the German fairytale about the man who had no\nshadow.\n\n=mantis="
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
}