{
  "export": {
    "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/whorl/1166",
    "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": 1166,
    "subject": "Is it SF?",
    "messages": 2,
    "voices": 2,
    "first": "2001-02-14T19:57:46+00:00",
    "last": "2001-02-15T01:25:43+00:00"
  },
  "messages": [
    {
      "message_id": "<whorl-v0012-0236@digest.urth.net>",
      "from": {
        "name": "Dan Rabin",
        "address": "wolfe-lists at danrabin.com"
      },
      "date": "2001-02-14T19:57:46+00:00",
      "subject": "(whorl) Is it SF?",
      "in_reply_to": null,
      "reply_link": null,
      "blocks": [
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "William Ansley writes,"
        },
        {
          "kind": "quote",
          "depth": 1,
          "text": "I was also bothered by the impossibly large size of the (big)\ngodling. Wolfe should make up his mind, is he writing science fiction\nor isn't he?"
        },
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "Should he?  Or should he just write?\n\n   -- Dan Rabin\n\n\n*This is WHORL, for discussion of Gene Wolfe's Book of the Long Sun."
        }
      ]
    },
    {
      "message_id": "<whorl-v0012-0241@digest.urth.net>",
      "from": {
        "name": "William Ansley",
        "address": "wansley at warwick.net"
      },
      "date": "2001-02-15T01:25:43+00:00",
      "subject": "Re: (whorl) Is it SF?",
      "in_reply_to": "<whorl-v0012-0236@digest.urth.net>",
      "reply_link": "subject",
      "blocks": [
        {
          "kind": "quote",
          "depth": 1,
          "text": "At 7:57 PM -0800 2/14/01, Dan Rabin wrote:\nWilliam Ansley writes,"
        },
        {
          "kind": "quote",
          "depth": 2,
          "text": "I was also bothered by the impossibly large size of the (big)\ngodling. Wolfe should make up his mind, is he writing science fiction\nor isn't he?"
        },
        {
          "kind": "quote",
          "depth": 1,
          "text": "Should he?  Or should he just write?"
        },
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "Well, of course, this question is unanswerable, since it boils down \nto a matter of opinion. But I will try to answer it below, \nnonetheless.\n\nThere is probably no SF writer who has not made many blunders of \nscientific fact, whether noticed by his or her readers or not. But, I \nfeel my complaint is valid. Wolfe makes enormous use of many of the \ntropes of SF. This leads to an expectation that he is going to \"play \nby the rules\" of SF. You may object that there are no such rules, or \nat least no universally or even widely agreed upon ones, but I think \nthere is one rule that we may request that an author follow, a rule \nthat goes beyond SF: self-consistency. (If you think this is an \nunreasonable request, then we must agree to disagree.)\n\nWolfe has pointed out several times in TBotNS that a giant human \nbeing beyond a certain size (a size which the godling in RttW is \ncertainly beyond) would be unable to move and probably crushed to \ndeath by his or her own weight, unless this giant mitigated the \neffects of gravity by means of underwater buoyancy or microgravity.\n\nSo, my complaint really boils down to this: I am disappointed that \nWolfe is displaying lapses of consistency between the New, Long and \nShort Sun books of which the matter of the godling's size is only one \nexample.\n\nWilliam Ansley"
        },
        {
          "kind": "sig",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "William Ansley\n\n*This is WHORL, for discussion of Gene Wolfe's Book of the Long Sun."
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
}