{
  "export": {
    "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/whorl/1134",
    "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": 1134,
    "subject": "Humans vs. inhumi at the end of _Short Sun_",
    "messages": 1,
    "voices": 1,
    "first": "2001-02-11T22:24:06+00:00",
    "last": "2001-02-11T22:24:06+00:00"
  },
  "messages": [
    {
      "message_id": "<whorl-v0012-0183@digest.urth.net>",
      "from": {
        "name": "Dan Rabin",
        "address": "wolfe-lists at danrabin.com"
      },
      "date": "2001-02-11T22:24:06+00:00",
      "subject": "(whorl) Humans vs. inhumi at the end of _Short Sun_",
      "in_reply_to": null,
      "reply_link": null,
      "blocks": [
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "The protagonist spends a lot of time treating inhumi as people and \ntrying to see their point of view, even to the point of wanting to \nlearn about their reproductive habits.  He must be the most \nsympathetic human the inhumi have encountered.  Then Jahlee tries to \nkill Nettle, and Juganu leads a war party against the protagonist, \nwho doesn't hesitate to kill them in either case (although he seems \nto have some regret about Jahlee).\n\nI can't figure out whether these incidents represent the inhumi not \nbeing able to rise above their nature, or whether they are a \nconsequence of their close imitation of humans.  Perhaps they imitate \nhumans in war as in love?\n\nWas the protagonist just kidding himself?  There are several times \nwhen he exacts a promise from a companion inhuma/u not to feed on \nmembers of his party, yet he knows that they *do* have to feed.  I \ndon't see how any rapprochement can emerge from the protagonist's \ntreatment of the inhumi, and I don't see how the outcome for humans \nnecessarily differs from the experience of the Neighbors.\n\n   -- Dan Rabin\n\n*This is WHORL, for discussion of Gene Wolfe's Book of the Long Sun."
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
}