{
  "export": {
    "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/545",
    "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": 545,
    "subject": "Educating Agia",
    "messages": 2,
    "voices": 2,
    "first": "1998-05-02T13:50:51+00:00",
    "last": "1998-05-09T01:15:59+00:00"
  },
  "messages": [
    {
      "message_id": "<urth-v0010-0066@digest.urth.net>",
      "from": {
        "name": "Charles Dye",
        "address": "raster at highfiber.com"
      },
      "date": "1998-05-02T13:50:51+00:00",
      "subject": "(urth) Re: Educating Agia",
      "in_reply_to": null,
      "reply_link": null,
      "blocks": [
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "William H. Ansley <wansley at warwick.net> writes:"
        },
        {
          "kind": "quote",
          "depth": 1,
          "text": "Agia has always struck me as being rather too well educated to be from the\nstratum of society Severian finds her in when he meets her. She seems to\nknow quite a bit about the Conciliator and the Botanic Gardens. Her little\nspeach about the Conciliator at the beginning of V. 1, Ch. 19 (p. 118, Orb\ned.) has always seemed a bit odd to me, coming from her. But, then again, I\ndon't believe we ever find out much about her past."
        },
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "I've never seen Agia as being generally educated.  Rather, she seems to\nhave picked up a lot of odd historical facts, or factoids.  Her offhand\nreference to the Conciliator living \"say, thirty thousand years ago\" (in\nShadow, Chapter 19) is unusually precise for a Commonwealth citizen.\nAnd the odd phrasing \"thousand years\" instead of \"chiliads\" or \"millenia\"\nsuggests to me that she heard it from someone who is not a Commonwealth\ncitizen.  Perhaps someone who was alive that long ago?  I see one obvious\nsuspect.\n\n(Wild speculation:  could Hethor have been the (unseen) soldier who betrays\nthe chiliarch freed by Severian?)\n\nraster at highfiber.com"
        }
      ]
    },
    {
      "message_id": "<urth-v0010-0117@digest.urth.net>",
      "from": {
        "name": "William H. Ansley",
        "address": "wansley at warwick.net"
      },
      "date": "1998-05-09T01:15:59+00:00",
      "subject": "Re: (urth) Re: Educating Agia",
      "in_reply_to": "<urth-v0010-0066@digest.urth.net>",
      "reply_link": "subject",
      "blocks": [
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "raster at highfiber.com (Charles Dye) writes:"
        },
        {
          "kind": "quote",
          "depth": 1,
          "text": "William H. Ansley <wansley at warwick.net> writes:"
        },
        {
          "kind": "quote",
          "depth": 2,
          "text": "Agia has always struck me as being rather too well educated to be from the\nstratum of society Severian finds her in when he meets her. She seems to\nknow quite a bit about the Conciliator and the Botanic Gardens. Her little\nspeach about the Conciliator at the beginning of V. 1, Ch. 19 (p. 118, Orb\ned.) has always seemed a bit odd to me, coming from her. But, then again, I\ndon't believe we ever find out much about her past."
        },
        {
          "kind": "quote",
          "depth": 1,
          "text": "I've never seen Agia as being generally educated.  Rather, she seems to\nhave picked up a lot of odd historical facts, or factoids.  Her offhand\nreference to the Conciliator living \"say, thirty thousand years ago\" (in\nShadow, Chapter 19) is unusually precise for a Commonwealth citizen.\nAnd the odd phrasing \"thousand years\" instead of \"chiliads\" or \"millenia\"\nsuggests to me that she heard it from someone who is not a Commonwealth\ncitizen.  Perhaps someone who was alive that long ago?  I see one obvious\nsuspect."
        },
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "Now that I look back on what I wrote and your reply, I think I understand\nwhat really bothered me about Agia. I wasn't that I thought she was too\neducated, it was that she seemed to be too obviously a vehicle for\nexposition. It seemed to me that Wolfe was letting the seams show in this\npassage.\n\nBut you have answered my objections nicely already. Undoubtedly most of\nwhat Agia tells Severian she picked up from Hethor, which explains the\n\"earthly\" flavor of her facts. If I also assume that Agia wanted to show\noff her store of knowledge for Severian to let him know he \"wasn't so\nsmart,\" which seems likely enough, just about all of my problems with this\npassage of TBotNS disappear.\n\nWilliam Ansley"
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
}