{
  "export": {
    "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/973",
    "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": 973,
    "subject": "Space Assignment: Rocket to the Moon!",
    "messages": 1,
    "voices": 1,
    "first": "1998-07-13T11:29:40+00:00",
    "last": "1998-07-13T11:29:40+00:00"
  },
  "messages": [
    {
      "message_id": "<urth-v0016-0067@digest.urth.net>",
      "from": {
        "name": "Dan Parmenter",
        "address": "dan at lec.com"
      },
      "date": "1998-07-13T11:29:40+00:00",
      "subject": "(urth) Space Assignment: Rocket to the Moon!",
      "in_reply_to": null,
      "reply_link": null,
      "blocks": [
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "All the evidence of the novels suggests that the Matachin Tower in its\noriginal spaceship form was your basic rocket design with some\nwindows; yet, somehow in my mind's eye I see it almost exactly as an\nunwieldy 1950's-style spacecraft as envisioned by say, Wally Wood (EC\nComics), perhaps with some ridiculous fins, though of course it's\nnever described as such.  \n\nAlso, the Witch's Tower is described as being different, with no walls\ninside and cold.  I imagine it as a cubicle-style office building\nwhere all the cubes are gone and there are only large open spaces that\nhave been re-partitioned in different ways.  It's never stated that\n*all* the old Citadel buildings are ships is it?  Damn, I don't have\nmy copy of URTH handy.\n\nAlso, the Bear Tower: do we ever meet any Beast-Handlers?  Severian\nbelieves that they take bears or sows in marriage, but is it possible\nthat this is simply a joking put-down based around a misunderstanding\nof the term \"animal husbandry\" (which I see translated as \"the art of\nworking with farm animals\") which could be indicative of Severian's\nnaivete considering that he takes pains to dispell some of the\nmisconceptions people have about his own guild.\n\nFinally, the Bear Tower as Zoetic Transport as Noah's Ark: are we to\npicture a Monarch-era fellow who, acting on some inner compulsion\nwhich he interprets as instructions of the Increate gathers up as many\nanimals as he can because of some impending disaster?  His mission\nnever materializes and the ship is never used for its original\npurpose, but he's got the animals and the know-how and so he sets up a\nsmall agribusiness concern which evolves into the modern Bear Tower?\n\nD"
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
}