{
  "export": {
    "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/whorl/1218",
    "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": 1218,
    "subject": "Tartaros's Blindness",
    "messages": 2,
    "voices": 2,
    "first": "2001-02-21T21:47:07+00:00",
    "last": "2001-02-21T22:21:42+00:00"
  },
  "messages": [
    {
      "message_id": "<whorl-v0012-0330@digest.urth.net>",
      "from": {
        "name": "Robert Borski",
        "address": "rborski at charter.net"
      },
      "date": "2001-02-21T22:21:42+00:00",
      "subject": "(whorl) Re: Tartaros's Blindness",
      "in_reply_to": null,
      "reply_link": null,
      "blocks": [
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "El cucaracha having written:\n\n<Tartaros is not only blind, was not only born blind, but is utterly and\nincurably and inalterably\nblind; even when riding/in possession of Auk, he cannot see through Auk's\neyes but must ask Auk to describe things.>\n\nPardon my naiveté here--I am an end user, not a code jockey--but aren't the\ngods of Mainframe, unless they're riding someone or something--computer\nprograms? And if the sibling \"programs\" of Tartaros--i.e., Scylla, Molpe,\nSphingx, etc.--can process visual information, then it should be no great\nmatter to splice the appropriate compiler sequences into Tartaros. That it\nhasn't ever been done before seems strictly a dictate of Pas's--perhaps\nreflecting his own bias against a defective son. As Scylla at one time puts\nit, \"Daddy had this thing about a male heir.\" Certainly an impaired\nchild--especially a first-born son--may have been disappointing to Typhon,\nperhaps even reflecting on his own notions of virility. But look at who it\nis that sides with father Pas when the revolt takes place in Mainframe:\nTartaros--\"the only unwilling god,\" as he puts it--and what better reward\nfor the son who had every reason to be bitter, but remained true, than\nrestoring his sight?\n\nThat Tartaros was born blind, and remained so for the entire first voyage of\nthe Whorl and then some seems incontrovertible; that he must die the same\nway, given the super technology of Wolfe's Short Sun milieu, seems more than\na little suspect.\n\nRobert Borski\n\n\n*This is WHORL, for discussion of Gene Wolfe's Book of the Long Sun."
        }
      ]
    },
    {
      "message_id": "<whorl-v0012-0333@digest.urth.net>",
      "from": {
        "name": "David DiGiacomo",
        "address": "dd at adobe.com"
      },
      "date": "2001-02-21T21:47:07+00:00",
      "subject": "Re:  (whorl) Re: Tartaros's Blindness",
      "in_reply_to": "<whorl-v0012-0330@digest.urth.net>",
      "reply_link": "subject",
      "blocks": [
        {
          "kind": "quote",
          "depth": 1,
          "text": "That Tartaros was born blind, and remained so for the entire first voyage of\nthe Whorl and then some seems incontrovertible; that he must die the same\nway, given the super technology of Wolfe's Short Sun milieu, seems more than\na little suspect."
        },
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "Typhon's technology is extremely limited, and fallible.\n\nThe gods are not AIs, they are simulations of scanned humans.  There is no\nsuggestion that they can be reprogrammed.  You will notice that Pas was\nnot able to remove Piaton's virtual head or to correct the various\ncharacter flaws of his children.\n\nFinally, Wolfe presents Tartaros's blindness as an axiom, not a theory.\n\n*This is WHORL, for discussion of Gene Wolfe's Book of the Long Sun."
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
}