{
  "export": {
    "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/5764",
    "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'"
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  "archive": "urth",
  "thread": {
    "id": 5764,
    "subject": "\"Donovan Sent Us\" review",
    "messages": 1,
    "voices": 1,
    "first": "2010-10-11T23:36:02+00:00",
    "last": "2010-10-11T23:36:02+00:00"
  },
  "messages": [
    {
      "message_id": "<AANLkTikf0L=gYS8RXixCFDnkKZ3x=1QehNw0xoxyXaOG@mail.gmail.com>",
      "from": {
        "name": "Gwern Branwen",
        "address": "gwern0 at gmail.com"
      },
      "date": "2010-10-11T23:36:02+00:00",
      "subject": "(urth) \"Donovan Sent Us\" review",
      "in_reply_to": null,
      "reply_link": null,
      "blocks": [
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "http://www.bestsf.net/2010/10/08/gene-wolfe-donovan-sent-us-years-best-sf-15/\n--Mark Watson"
        },
        {
          "kind": "quote",
          "depth": 1,
          "text": "I had been looking forward to reading a Gene Wolfe story in this volume, but in the end was rather let-down."
        },
        {
          "kind": "quote",
          "depth": 1,
          "text": "It’s a Second World War alternate history — what if the USA didn’t join in, and the Germans won. The political setting in America is also different, as Eisenhower isn’t president anymore, but a President Kuhn, of the German-American Bund. Having read the story on the train, with no Google on hand, I had to wait to get home to find out about this anti-semitic, anti-communist, pro-Hitler piece of 1930s American History. I struggled to engage with the story — an American parachuted into occupied Britain to rescue a VIP. The American is fluent in German, but in speaking English in the guise of the German, he speaks in a terrible cod-German not very far off “ve haff vays of making you talk”. He infiltrates a bunker quite easily, and co-incidentally stumbles across the VIP, whom he rescues. Pondering next steps over a fine cigar (there’s your clue as to the identity of the VIP), the perceived potential threat to world peace of the VIP leads to an unexpected denouement."
        },
        {
          "kind": "quote",
          "depth": 1,
          "text": "I wouldn’t have identified this as a Gene Wolfe story, and it comes from the same anthology as Robert Charles Wilson’s ??This Peaceable Land, or, The Unbearable Vision of Harriet Beacher Stowe??, which I enthused about at length, and which is a country mile ahead of this story in terms of quality. Unless of course Wolfe is being very, very clever, and there’s a clue in there that I’ve missed that gives fuller richness to his story."
        },
        {
          "kind": "sig",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "gwern\nhttp://www.gwern.net/"
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
}