{
  "export": {
    "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/864",
    "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": 864,
    "subject": "Little Severian, Things in Jars, and Martians",
    "messages": 1,
    "voices": 1,
    "first": "1998-06-27T07:09:23+00:00",
    "last": "1998-06-27T07:09:23+00:00"
  },
  "messages": [
    {
      "message_id": "<urth-v0015-0028@digest.urth.net>",
      "from": {
        "name": "John Moar",
        "address": "jmoar at zetnet.co.uk"
      },
      "date": "1998-06-27T07:09:23+00:00",
      "subject": "(urth) Little Severian, Things in Jars, and Martians",
      "in_reply_to": null,
      "reply_link": null,
      "blocks": [
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "Thanks for the responses so far, although I'd still like some information \non the homunculus.\n\nAs for my not 'getting' the Little Severian sequence: I originally read \nparts of tBotNS when I was far too young to understand it properly. I \ndid, however, remember how Little Severian died.\n\nThis sequence is, IMO, one of the simplest uses of shock in tBotNS, not \nfollowing the usual methods of foreshadowing or retrospective \ninevitability.\nLittle Severian's death seems to be unusually timed, part-way between \nleaving him a bit-player and expanding him to a secondary character. So, \nwhen I reread this knowing when he would die, it fell flat.\n\nBTW, do Big and Little Severian remind anyone else of Batman and Robin? \n<g>\n\n\nOn the subjects of the rats in the library. I was reminded of something \nin a story by Stanley G. Weinbaum. The story, _Valley of Dreams_, is the \nsequel to _A Martian Odyssey_. In this story, the Martian Tweel, upon \nentering a library, angrily chases away a ratlike creature which is \nattempting to read the books stored there. This story may be rare enough \nthat this is nothing, but still..."
        },
        {
          "kind": "sig",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "James Moar\n\n\"...it represents for me all that monomaniacal fabric of argument, so\ntightly woven that not even the tiniest objection or spark of light can\nescape its net, in which human minds become enmeshed whenever the\nsubject is one in which no appeal to fact is possible\" - _Sword_, Ch. 38"
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
}