{
  "export": {
    "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/whorl/124",
    "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'"
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  "archive": "whorl",
  "thread": {
    "id": 124,
    "subject": "The Pas Perplex: Two-Headed Tyrants in Generation Starship Fiction",
    "messages": 1,
    "voices": 1,
    "first": "1997-02-24T17:54:44+00:00",
    "last": "1997-02-24T17:54:44+00:00"
  },
  "messages": [
    {
      "message_id": "<whorl-v0003-0176@digest.urth.net>",
      "from": {
        "name": "Ranjit Bhatnagar",
        "address": "ranjit at gradient.cis.upenn.edu"
      },
      "date": "1997-02-24T17:54:44+00:00",
      "subject": "(whorl) The Pas Perplex: Two-Headed Tyrants in Generation Starship Fiction",
      "in_reply_to": null,
      "reply_link": null,
      "blocks": [
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "[sorry about the title; I just couldn't resist!]\n\nDominus reminds me that a major character in that other\nclassic of Generation Starship Fiction, Heinlein's _Orphans\nof the Sky,_ was a two-headed mutant who led a small group\nof colonists, previously unaware that they lived on a\nspaceship at all, off the ship to the destination planet.\n\nHave any of you seen the teevee scifi series \"Starlost?\"\nPretty dreary, but I was quite fond of the MONITORS,\nexquisitely polite and sometimes helpful entities who\nappeared on screens when summoned (by the\ncolonists... unaware that they lived on a spaceship at\nall...)\n\nSomeone asked on the net if there's ever been a story about\na generation starship where the colonists DIDN'T forget\ntheir history and mission, and managed to settle the target\nplanet without a hitch.  Now that I think of it, Gregory\nBenford has written a few stories in which the colonists\ndidn't forget, but I don't think they ever made it to their\ndestination in any of them.  The Whorl could be unique in\nhaving a cargo deliberately kept in the dark.  That they're\nreferred to as cargo at all...\n\nAnyway...\n\nviscacha:\n\t[Kypris] and Tartaros worked fulfill the Plan of Pas\n\tby getting a lander launched from Viron.  Why Viron?\n\tBecause it's a godless (in both senses) city -- no \n\ttheophanies for 30 years.\n\nThat's great!  Finally an answer for \"Why Viron?\"\n\nBut if Quetzal wasn't primarily responsible for this\nshortage of gods in Viron, um, who was?  \n\nmantis:\n\tmaybe it had to do with the switch to card currency?\n\nBut isn't there evidence that cards are used outside of\nViron too?\n\n\tThe Lemuroid conspirators?\n\nYeah, they seem to have the technical knowledge and\nresources; though I've suggested that they might have\nmotives similar to the gods on a smaller scale, they still\nmight not like having the gods hanging around and meddling.\n\n-rabbit\n\n\nQuestions or problems to whorl-owner at lists.best.com"
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
}