{
  "export": {
    "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/usenet/16",
    "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": "usenet",
  "thread": {
    "id": 16,
    "subject": "\"Citadel of the Autarch\" and \"Fevre Dream\"",
    "messages": 1,
    "voices": 1,
    "first": "1983-11-05T21:35:00+00:00",
    "last": "1983-11-05T21:35:00+00:00"
  },
  "messages": [
    {
      "message_id": "<13371@sri-arpa.UUCP>",
      "from": {
        "name": "John Redford",
        "address": "vlsi at dec-marlboro"
      },
      "date": "1983-11-05T21:35:00+00:00",
      "subject": "\"Citadel of the Autarch\" and \"Fevre Dream\"",
      "in_reply_to": null,
      "reply_link": null,
      "blocks": [
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "All you people who have been waiting for the last volume of \"The Book of\nthe New Sun\" to come out before reading any of it no longer have\nany excuse.  The fourth volume, \"The Citadel of the Autarch\", is now out in\npaperback.   The previous books have all been nominated for Hugos and\nNebulas.  The only reason they haven't swept all the awards is that the\nindividual books are only pieces of the whole.  Read them in order, and\nfairly soon after one another, because Wolfe has no compunctions about\nreferring to events that took place eight hundred pages before.\nI wish someone could nominate the entire series for an award, for it\nwould be a welcome change from stuff like \"Foundation's Edge\" or\n\"Friday\".   These are competent books, but they are clearly minor compared to\nAsimov's and Heinlein's earlier works.  Wolfe, on the other hand, is\nat the height of his powers.   I won't try to describe the books, since\nothers have already done that, but suffice it to say that Wolfe takes the\nsetting and tone of Vance's \"The Dying Earth\" (he acknowledges the debt) and\nfills it with a depth of language and storytelling style that I have never seen\nin any other author. \n    Another new paperback worth more than its price is \"Fevre Dream\" by\nGeorge R. R. Martin.  The setting is the Mississippi in the mid 1800's, the\nheyday of the riverboats.  A rambunctious but down-on-his-luck steamboat\nskipper is made an odd offer by a pale, mysterious stranger.   He will\npay for the construction of the grandest boat the River had ever seen,\nin return for the skipper's cooperation in a quest.  The stranger\nis a vampire, and his quest is to find the others of his kind and unite them\nin an effort to finally make peace with humanity.  What better way\nto search a continent, than by cruising the endless waterways of the\nMississippi and it tributaries?  Both river life and\nthe vampires are well drawn.  For instance, the boats were all woodburning, and\nso sealed their own fate by denuding of timber all the riverbanks of the\nMidwest.   Or, if vampires are immortal and have the strength of ten, then why\nhaven't they taken over the world?  Because the strength of vampire infants\nmakes childbirth a terrible process, which kills the mother as often as not. \nThis sort of background detail makes \"Fevre Dream\" a very solid adventure\nnovel.\n\n/jlr"
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
}