{
  "export": {
    "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/538",
    "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": 538,
    "subject": "Terraforming Xanthic",
    "messages": 2,
    "voices": 2,
    "first": "1998-05-02T01:04:00+00:00",
    "last": "1998-05-02T02:22:48+00:00"
  },
  "messages": [
    {
      "message_id": "<urth-v0010-0049@digest.urth.net>",
      "from": {
        "name": "m.driussi",
        "address": "m.driussi at genie.geis.com"
      },
      "date": "1998-05-02T01:04:00+00:00",
      "subject": "(urth) Terraforming Xanthic",
      "in_reply_to": null,
      "reply_link": null,
      "blocks": [
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "FunkMonkey,\n\nThe terraforming and renaming story is told by Thea (II, ch. 10).\n\nThe presumed Xanthic Continent is a bit more dicey.  The Xanthic\nLands are a group of a couple hundred (or more) islands in the ocean\nto the west of the Commonwealth (V, ch. 46).  The people there speak\nthe Xanthic tongue and are xanthoderms (yellow skinned).  The only\nnamed island we know is \"Blue Flower Island\" (V, ch. 46).  The people\nare a bit more primitive than folks in the Commonwealth, such that\nthey have little food security and periodic food riots.  Call that\nfact one.\n\nFact two.  Jonas and Hethor talking some kinda foreign language(s).\nJonas talking about an Asian-sounding name being common in a place\nnow sunk under the sea back when he was young.  Seems like some Asian\nspacefaring group was topdog on Urth back when Jonas and Hethor first\nwent up and away.\n\nFact three.  Cyriaca's tale of the Library (III, ch. 6).  Rise and\nlong decline of the First Empire.\n\nSpeculation puts these three together: Jonas and Hethor come from the\ntime of the First Empire (Cyriaca's tale), which then suggests that\nthe First Empire was created by Asians (since Jonas and Hethor have\nAsian tongues, as it were), and the Xanthic Lands (populated by what\nto our eyes appear to be Asians) are the fallen remnants of that\nparticular civilization.  That someplace important sank while they\nwere gone could also go towards explaining how they couldn't find a\nport to land (as Jonas says about the crashlanding).\n\n(Must remember to intercorrelate Cyriaca's tale with Tale of the Boy\nCalled Frog . . . )\n\n=mantis="
        }
      ]
    },
    {
      "message_id": "<urth-v0010-0052@digest.urth.net>",
      "from": {
        "name": "C R Culver",
        "address": "crculver at aol.com"
      },
      "date": "1998-05-02T02:22:48+00:00",
      "subject": "Re:  (urth) Terraforming Xanthic",
      "in_reply_to": "<urth-v0010-0049@digest.urth.net>",
      "reply_link": "subject",
      "blocks": [
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "Mantis said:\n<Fact two.  Jonas and Hethor talking some kinda foreign language(s).>\n\nCan you provide citation for Hethor's speaking in a foreign tongue?\n\n\n< That someplace important sank while they\nwere gone could also go towards explaining how they couldn't find a\nport to land (as Jonas says about the crashlanding).>\n\nDuring the First Empire, if truly an empire it was, one could find a spaceport\nin any continent on Earth/Urth. I think that Jonas' crashlanding was caused,\nnot by the loss of a single area and its spaceport, but rather the general\nloss of technology after the end of this Empire.\n\n\n<(Must remember to intercorrelate Cyriaca's tale with Tale of the Boy Called\nFrog . . . )>\n\nI was about to say that can't be important, but then I remembered there was no\nsuch thing in Wolfe's books <g>\n\nChristopher R. Culver <crculver at aol.com>\nhttp://members.aol.com/crculver/index.html"
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
}