{
  "export": {
    "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/whorl/126",
    "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": 126,
    "subject": "The R Tangent",
    "messages": 1,
    "voices": 1,
    "first": "1997-02-25T03:29:00+00:00",
    "last": "1997-02-25T03:29:00+00:00"
  },
  "messages": [
    {
      "message_id": "<whorl-v0003-0178@digest.urth.net>",
      "from": {
        "name": "m.driussi",
        "address": "m.driussi at genie.com"
      },
      "date": "1997-02-25T03:29:00+00:00",
      "subject": "(whorl) The R Tangent",
      "in_reply_to": null,
      "reply_link": null,
      "blocks": [
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "Reply:  Item #1194454 from WHORL at LISTS.BEST.COM@INET02#\n\nProtean `R,'\n\nRe: \"Orphans of the Sky,\" wasn't the two-headed mutie giant just\nthe second in command?  I.e., the hero's \"Tonto,\" to show how the\npure strain hero could tolerate diversity.  <g>\n\nI seem to recall that in Harry Harrison's CAPTIVE UNIVERSE, the\ncolonists were kept in a stable society modeled on that of the\nAztecs, and the guardian of the tunnel between the worlds (of\nessentially cargo and crew) was a robot in humanoid form with two\nsnake heads on top.  Based on an Aztec god.  (Colonists deliberately\nkept in the dark here.)  In Aldis's NON-STOP (aka STARSHIP) there\nwere mysterious ancient giants and aliens on board the ship, but it turned\nout to be that the crew had grown steadily smaller in stature (fish in\na bowl?) so that their own ancestors were the giants; and the aliens\nwere really humans come onboard to study them, as the ship had\nreturned to Earth and been orbiting for some time.\n\nLet's see, what else?  Delany's BALLAD OF BETA-2 is about an\nanthropologist studying the empty generation starship\npost-colonization.  There was an Infocom game called \"Starcross\" that\nhad some pretty neat elements.  Coney's THE HERO OF DOWNWAYS . . .\nlet's see, how does that one go?  Basically a hero is needed, so he's\ngrown from the hero-vat . . . in the end, was that even a generation\nstarship story?  (Can't remember.  Read it close to DARK UNIVERSE by\n— and I often confuse them.  One or both are quasi-generation\nstarship stories.)  Then there's Geston's THE LORDS OF THE\nSTARSHIP, where generations pass but the dingus doesn't even lift\noff!  \"The Starlost\" pilot was novelized by Edward Bryant, I think?\nTHE DREAM MILLENNIUM by James White has the sleepers going through\n\"altered states\" style evolutionary progression dreams, from primordial\nsea up to the society they left, and there's that mysterious entity\nonboard the ship.\n\nRe: card currency used outside of Viron.  If you can find some text\nto that effect, I'd be much obliged.  I myself don't know.\n\n=mantis=\n\nQuestions or problems to whorl-owner at lists.best.com"
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
}