{
  "export": {
    "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/6716",
    "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": 6716,
    "subject": "a pre-writeup general question on the short story Lukora",
    "messages": 1,
    "voices": 1,
    "first": "2015-01-31T17:34:47+00:00",
    "last": "2015-01-31T17:34:47+00:00"
  },
  "messages": [
    {
      "message_id": "<CAF1072zg=g_WZNcNoOCDJxon=75+vKB3_Z-j+L6GPUSN85weag@mail.gmail.com>",
      "from": {
        "name": "Marc Aramini",
        "address": "marcaramini at gmail.com"
      },
      "date": "2015-01-31T17:34:47+00:00",
      "subject": "(urth)  a pre-writeup general question on the short story Lukora",
      "in_reply_to": null,
      "reply_link": null,
      "blocks": [
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "Trying to finish up a few write ups in the late 80s and one that I have\nthought about but not started seriously yet is Lukora.  The plot is simple\nenough, possibly off world surveyors are searching for \"Small Folk\" and the\nfemale suffers bouts of unconsciousness while following the male as he\nwanders around in the forest (full of \"needle- trees\"). They meet up with a\npale woman whose initial description is tri-partite before she comes close,\nand it is merely her dark hair over her white shoulders splitting her so.\nEventually the female seems to be overcome with a kind of blood lust that\nis almost lycanthropic.\n\nThe story is like a mixture of SF and fantasy, but the name Lukora seems\nclose to the Spanish word locura, for madness or insanity.  If it is SF,\nthen this seems to be a \"rabies\" kind of story where the periods of\nunconsciousness are a kind of scientific lycanthropy and both of the\nsearchers are contaminated.  While Wolfe has done the tree/bacteria thing\nin Fifth Head, the needle trees (Evergreens) keep coming up here and I\ndon't want to necessarily say that the small folk they seek are like the\nshadow children or the personified bacteria of Peritonitis, but the tribe\nwhich Michael battles has some members almost as tall as him ...\n\nTrying to decide if I should pursue the possibility of a female goddess of\nmadness and mythic resonances or the SF element - is the Lukora/locura\nsimilarity simply  made up or is personified madness the theme?\n\nThe other issue: This was written for Terry Carr's memorial anthology, an\ninfluential editor and SF fan who also did some writing of his own.  His\nUniverse and Best of Anthologies are fairly famous.  Any allusion to his\nwork, fiction, or editing, could be so wide ranging as to be beyond the\nscope of my research allotment for this brief story (the stories in his\ncollections are diverse and permeate the genre).  Is anyone familiar with\nCarr's own fictional worlds to posit a direct allusion, or is this merely a\nstory Wolfe wrote for the anthology?\n\nThought maybe someone would be more familiar with Carr's particular genre\nimpact than I was."
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
}