{
  "export": {
    "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/whorl/1309",
    "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": 1309,
    "subject": "RttW ending: when and who",
    "messages": 1,
    "voices": 1,
    "first": "2001-03-31T09:53:35+00:00",
    "last": "2001-03-31T09:53:35+00:00"
  },
  "messages": [
    {
      "message_id": "<whorl-v0012-0518@digest.urth.net>",
      "from": {
        "name": "Adam Stephanides",
        "address": "adamsteph at earthlink.net"
      },
      "date": "2001-03-31T09:53:35+00:00",
      "subject": "(whorl) RttW ending: when and who",
      "in_reply_to": null,
      "reply_link": null,
      "blocks": [
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "An aeon ago (well, Feb. 9) Henry Kaiser asked:"
        },
        {
          "kind": "quote",
          "depth": 1,
          "text": "How did they get the Whorl ready to leave so fast?  Earlier, we were told by\nthe surgeon on p. 331 that it [might] take \"...years.  A lifetime, likely as\nnot.\" to ready for departure.  It does not seem like it's more than a year or\ntwo later at the end of the narrative and it's already out of sight of the\nnaked eye."
        },
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "(I thought I remembered a reply, but couldn't find it in the archives.)\n\nAfter rereading the ending, I think I know the answer.  The Whorl doesn't\nleave so fast; the last two paragraphs are written many years after the rest\nof the book.  The evidence is the words with which these paragraphs begin:\n\"The faint, blinking star that old people call the _Whorl_ is fainter than\never.\"  The implication of these words is that it is only \"old people\" who\nrefer to it as the Whorl, and hence that all those who grew up on the Whorl\nare now old.  But at the time the rest of the book is written, Horn is\nmiddle-aged, not old.  (Hyacinth, who is older than Horn, is described as\nmiddle-aged (IGJ, 127).)  Moreover, earlier in the Afterword, the editors\nrefer to it simply as the Whorl.  In all probability, at least two decades\nhave passed between the writing of the rest of the book and the writing of\nthe final two paragraphs; they were either added to a later edition of the\nbook, or (more probably) written in by hand in a reader's copy.\n\nHenry also asked:"
        },
        {
          "kind": "quote",
          "depth": 1,
          "text": "What narrative voice is that at the end in the final two paragraphs?  Is that\nDaisy writing the last two paragraphs or someone else?"
        },
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "Probably not Daisy.  For one thing, if the final paragraphs were written\nlong after Daisy's account of Silk's last bow, there's no reason why it\nshould be Daisy.  For another, the last paragraph refers to Seawrack as an\n\"eerie young woman.\"  But Daisy's description of Seawrack presents her as\nexotic and dangerous, but not eerie.  And it may be just my imagination, but\nI think that Daisy's writing style is more matter-of-fact than that of the\nlast two paragraphs.\n\nAnd if they're not by Daisy, they're surely not by any of the other editors,\nwho would have indicated their authorship.  My hunch is that they're written\nby somebody who had never met the five passengers of the _Seanettle_, but\nknew of them only from the BotSS.  (Or are there six passengers?  Babbie is\npresent at the meeting with Daisy, and if my theory is correct the writer of\nthe last paragraph could have simply overlooked him when listing the\npassengers.)\n\n--Adam\n\n\n*This is WHORL, for discussion of Gene Wolfe's Book of the Long Sun."
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
}