{
  "export": {
    "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/551",
    "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": 551,
    "subject": "Antechamber, mask, HALE",
    "messages": 1,
    "voices": 1,
    "first": "1998-05-04T08:40:11+00:00",
    "last": "1998-05-04T08:40:11+00:00"
  },
  "messages": [
    {
      "message_id": "<urth-v0010-0076@digest.urth.net>",
      "from": {
        "name": "Peter Stephenson",
        "address": "pws at ifh.de"
      },
      "date": "1998-05-04T08:40:11+00:00",
      "subject": "(urth) Antechamber, mask, HALE",
      "in_reply_to": null,
      "reply_link": null,
      "blocks": [
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "Whew, I've never seen so many messages... it doesn't seem worth staying\nsilent at the moment, so...\n\n1) Antechamber:  it just occurred to me this has more specific Kafkaesque\novertones than I'd assumed.  There's a famous story in `The Trial', told\nto K. by a priest who turns out to be a chaplain of the Court (with which\neveryone is somehow associated):  a man tries to gain admission to the\nLaw, but is held back by a gatekeeper.  He spends his whole life waiting\nin that room.  He is told that, were he to get through, he would find\na whole sequence of other antechambers (I read it in German, so the\nword itself certainly didn't occur); even the third gatekeeper is too\nterrible for the first one to behold.  As the man is finally dying, he\nasks the gatekeeper why no-one else tries to gain admission, and is told\n`This door was put there for you alone.  Now I will go and close it.'\n(It's in the chapter called `Im Dom', `In the Cathedral', towards the end.)\nThe individual importance isn't there in Wolfe's version, but the notion\nof spending one's life waiting for access to the Law is very similar.\n\n2) Agilus's Mask:  I'm sure Mantis is right about this, but I think\nthere's a relationship with a wider thread here.  There are lots of masks\nin the Book, and they are all related to some sort of deception, benign\nor otherwise, beyond that implied by the mask itself.  Hence Agilus's could\nbe a clue to the reader that some deception is about to take place...\nand when Agia appears masked (although we don't know it's her), it's a\ndouble clue.  That's actually extraordinarily generous by Wolfe's\nstandards.\n\n3) HALE:  Totally off the topic, did anyone see that article in April's\nScientific American (also on the cover) about High Altitude Long Endurance\nplatforms that were going to fly for weeks on end over cities providing\ncommunications facilities, and did anyone think of the mysterious bomber\ntowards the end of Free Live Free?\n\nPeter"
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
}