{
  "export": {
    "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/562",
    "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": 562,
    "subject": "Ben Free, Son of God?",
    "messages": 1,
    "voices": 1,
    "first": "1998-05-06T01:02:27+00:00",
    "last": "1998-05-06T01:02:27+00:00"
  },
  "messages": [
    {
      "message_id": "<urth-v0010-0091@digest.urth.net>",
      "from": {
        "name": "William H. Ansley",
        "address": "wansley at warwick.net"
      },
      "date": "1998-05-06T01:02:27+00:00",
      "subject": "(urth) Ben Free, Son of God?",
      "in_reply_to": null,
      "reply_link": null,
      "blocks": [
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "I re-read FLF a while ago and noticed something that hasn't been discussed\nin this group. Since all (most?) of Wolfe's major works have a Christ\nfigure in them, one would expect FLF to have one, too. Ben Free seems to be\nthe closest thing to one. He does offer the four protagonists a \"new life\"\nat the end of the book, just before the epilogue, and just before this he\nsays that he arranged that they all get their greatest desires \"because\nI've learned that we all have to get them before we can have better ones.\"\n\nBut, in FLF, it is (more or less) directly implied that Ben Free is the Son\nof God. Dr Makee \"is\" God. This comes from Ch. 11, P. 69 of the Tor pb. ed.:\n\n\"Do I look like God?\" the old doctor said. \"I don't know.\" As a matter of\nfact he did look like God. He was a small, elderly man who sported a little\nwhite beard and an even whiter mustache; the collar of a tattersall\nshirt--an almost infallible sign of the presense of deity--peeped above the\ncollar of his overcoat.\n\nand this from ch. 31, p. 206:\n\nThe old doctor began to pump the blood pressure cuff. \"He was my son, you\nknow.\" Barnes stared at him, and he chuckled again. \"Not my actual\nson--Tommy died a long while ago, and I think Ben was really a few years\nolder than I am. But we used to pretend that way and we had a lot of fun.\n...\"\n\nand finally this from ch. 36, p. 241-242:\n\nBarnes shook his head.\n  \"She said, 'God, you gotta take care of Baby Phil because he won't never\ntake care of himself.' I wasn't there, but Bubba was, and he told me. God\nhas to get me out, and you're his chosen instrument.\"\n  \"Instrument, hell. I never even met Him!\"\n  Dr. Makee chuckled and nudged Barnes with an elbow. \"Don't be too sure.\"\n\nNow all of this is done in a playful, not to mention peculiar, way and\nprobably isn't meant to be taken seriously.\n\nBut then FLF is a playful, not to mention peculiar, novel. However, I am\nnot at all sure it isn't meant to be taken seriously.\n\nWilliam Ansley"
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
}