{
  "export": {
    "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/5804",
    "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": 5804,
    "subject": "Urth Digest, Vol 76, Issue 36",
    "messages": 1,
    "voices": 1,
    "first": "2010-12-05T17:26:44+00:00",
    "last": "2010-12-05T17:26:44+00:00"
  },
  "messages": [
    {
      "message_id": "<AANLkTikOPGc9WkxMb7_fsp5K7o5ZWzKzjTa6UxyCqoFq@mail.gmail.com>",
      "from": {
        "name": "Andrew Mason",
        "address": "andrew.mason53 at googlemail.com"
      },
      "date": "2010-12-05T17:26:44+00:00",
      "subject": "(urth) Urth Digest, Vol 76, Issue 36",
      "in_reply_to": null,
      "reply_link": null,
      "blocks": [
        {
          "kind": "quote",
          "depth": 1,
          "text": "On the other hand there is no St. Hethor."
        },
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "Actually there is a St Hethor. Apparently he is one of the martyrs of\nChertsey (sometimes spelt Ethor, which may be how you missed him). On\nthe other hand, we are told that Hethor isn't his real name, so that's\nnot conclusive - I would take it just to mean that he was born before\nCommonwealth naming conventions were established, but it could\nalternatively mean he is an alien."
        },
        {
          "kind": "quote",
          "depth": 1,
          "text": "My biggest problem with Jeff's theory is the final three words. Why can we only look at BotNS from one lens\nor perspective? Viewing the aliens in the story as beings manufactured for a purpose is a good way of\npresenting them to residents of a modern industrial nation. Surely God created Dionysus, Satan and Gabriel\n(or their concepts) for a purpose.\n\nBut how would ancient Greeks or gnostics view such beings? Isn't their perspective just as important or valid\nas ours? Heck the oldest parts of the Bible (including the first few Commanments) virtually acknowledge a\npolytheistic world. ?I wonder how people 3000 years from now will view our religious beliefs."
        },
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "But the claim that the Hierodules are manufactured for a purpose is\n_not_ just a perspective; it's what it says in the text.  Well,\nactually 'manufactured' is too strong; the word used is 'shaped'; so\nthey were not made out of whole cloth, but out of pre-existing beings.\nBut we are told, quite clearly, that the Hierodules were made for a\npurpose. They are a very different kind of being from the\nHierogrammates, as they themselves accept; 'far below' them; in a way\neven below humans, as having been 'shaped more quickly'.\n\nI am worried about your approach because it seems terribly\nhuman-centric. All beings that are rational and non-human are classed\ntogether as gods; there's us, and there's all the others. But I don't\nthink that's Wolfe's perspective; for him there are all sorts of\ndifferent kinds of being, and humans are just one of them. There's no\nreason why just because one of these kinds has a certain power, the\nothers should have it as well. There's certainly no reason why all\nbeings except humans should share a power.\n\nNow, this doesn't, I think, put any specific limits on what Inire can\ndo, because he's odd. He is different from the rest of his race\nanyway, just by being long-lived, something that is hard to explain,\nand so he might be different from them in other ways as well. But I\ndon't think you can make any assumptions about his powers just on the\nbasis of his being an alien."
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
}