{ "export": { "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/whorl/105", "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": "whorl", "thread": { "id": 105, "subject": "things 'n stuff", "messages": 2, "voices": 2, "first": "1997-02-18T12:09:12+00:00", "last": "1997-02-19T12:51:53+00:00" }, "messages": [ { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Ranjit Bhatnagar", "address": "ranjit at gradient.cis.upenn.edu" }, "date": "1997-02-18T12:09:12+00:00", "subject": "(whorl) things 'n stuff", "in_reply_to": null, "reply_link": null, "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "mantis:\n\tHey, anybody--how come Rose's door was smashed\n\topen/down at around the time of her death? And \n\tnobody fixed it? Talk about surreal . . .\n\nIs this a question, or a quiz? I'm never sure! :-)\nRemember when Marble's brain popped a cork, her soup\ndissolved into numbers and she went out the wrong door? She\nfinally made it upstairs, and misjudging her strength put\nher hand through the door. \n\nThis scene-- and the one where Marble is haunted by a\nmemory, and a trunk, and a \"cloud,\" and _Why don't you dust\nit?_ -- are some of my favorites. Wonderful and\ndisorienting how Wolfe can write the point of view of a\nsomewhat malfunctioning robot. Bringing the reader into\nsomeone else's daze is one of his signature effects.\n\nmantis:\n\tWe struggle to define the Mission of The Whorl\n\nI still favor Potto's explanation, as you put it: a two\nhundred year (subjective) journey, one way, to establish a\ncolony for the glory of the Monarch. Sounds like something\na monarch would do, like a bunch of them did on our planet\nover the last six hundred years or so. (Penal colonies came\nlater, after the first waves of I-Claim-This-Land-in-the-Name-of \ncolonies, no?) That Blue turns out to be a rotten place\ndoesn't necessarily mean that Pas had bad intentions.\nScience fiction is full of stories of people colonizing\nunpleasant planets. Maybe the Blue/Green system was the\nbest Pas could get given his financial and technological\nlimits. Maybe he bought or leased it from the Inhumi. (\"In\nconsideration for a fee of 1200 juicy bodies per year...\")\nQuetzal is the super, come up to make sure the new tenants\nget moved in safely...\n\nmantis:\n\t(Imagine the culture rift on Blue between the\n\tgenerational colonists and the Sleepers! Can't \n\twait for the Short Sun series!)\n\nYeah! Hmm, in some Larry Niven novel or other, the crew of\na colony ship gets fed up at having to live through decades\nof boring space travel when everyone else is sleeping\nhappily, so on arrival the crew sets themselves up as a\nruling class, controlling all the resources, before thawing\nout the sleepers.\n\nrock, on the condition of the Whorl:\n\nGood points, on why the Whorl is breaking down -- cargo\nripping out the cards and so forth. But I also imagine that\nPas and his engineers would've built the Whorl to last for\nthe duration of the journey and no longer -- budget\noverruns, y'know -- and didn't expect it to be prolonged.\nHmm, another thing -- maybe the weather patterns were\ndesigned to take the force of acceleration and deceleration\ninto account. Now the thing has been in orbit for a few\ndecades, and the weather's all messed up. I doubt that any\npower on the Whorl has the resources to repair it, though it\nwould probably help a lot just pumping out the tunnels.\n\nmantis, I can't see Mint getting mixed up in the Rose/Marble\nconfusion. Any hints?\n\n-rana\n\n\n\nQuestions or problems to whorl-owner at lists.best.com" } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Doug Eigsti", "address": "douge at nti.com" }, "date": "1997-02-19T12:51:53+00:00", "subject": "Re: (whorl) things 'n stuff", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "rana writes:" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Yeah! Hmm, in some Larry Niven novel or other, the crew of\na colony ship gets fed up at having to live through decades\nof boring space travel when everyone else is sleeping\nhappily, so on arrival the crew sets themselves up as a\nruling class, controlling all the resources, before thawing\nout the sleepers." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "The book is A GIFT FROM EARTH.\n\n=Talon=\n\nQuestions or problems to whorl-owner at lists.best.com" } ] } ] }