{
  "export": {
    "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/whorl/1328",
    "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": 1328,
    "subject": "Twin planets",
    "messages": 2,
    "voices": 2,
    "first": "2001-04-09T09:51:24+00:00",
    "last": "2001-04-09T10:08:32+00:00"
  },
  "messages": [
    {
      "message_id": "<whorl-v0012-0554@digest.urth.net>",
      "from": {
        "name": "Nicholas Gevers",
        "address": "vermoulian at yahoo.com"
      },
      "date": "2001-04-09T09:51:24+00:00",
      "subject": "(whorl) Twin planets",
      "in_reply_to": null,
      "reply_link": null,
      "blocks": [
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "Daniel, thanks for your remarks--in a nutshell, yes,\nthe Robinson books are eminently worth reading, the\nDante parallels could do with a lot of expansion (how\nabout it?), and the intertextuality with Le Guin's THE\nDISPOSSESSED is compelling. A thought there: in a Le\nGuin/Wolfe mapping, Anarres (attempt at utopia)=Blue,\nand Urras (dystopia)=both Urth (old, over-exploited,\nhopeless) and Green (like capitalist A-Io in THE\nDISPOSSESSED, only a Darwinist Hell in place of a\nSocial Darwinist one.)\n\n--Hurriedly, Nick Gevers."
        }
      ]
    },
    {
      "message_id": "<whorl-v0012-0555@digest.urth.net>",
      "from": {
        "name": "Dan'l Danehy-Oakes",
        "address": "ddanehy at siebel.com"
      },
      "date": "2001-04-09T10:08:32+00:00",
      "subject": "RE: (whorl) Twin planets",
      "in_reply_to": "<whorl-v0012-0554@digest.urth.net>",
      "reply_link": "subject",
      "blocks": [
        {
          "kind": "quote",
          "depth": 1,
          "text": "Daniel, "
        },
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "Grumble: It's \"Dan'l,\" with no \"ie\". Or \"Blattid,\" or \"Roach\"\nif y'all prefer."
        },
        {
          "kind": "quote",
          "depth": 1,
          "text": "the Dante parallels could do with a lot of expansion (how\nabout it?), "
        },
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "When I'm done reading Dante -- I only noticed because I happened\nto decide to read the Commedia recently."
        },
        {
          "kind": "quote",
          "depth": 1,
          "text": "and the intertextuality with Le Guin's THE DISPOSSESSED is compelling.\nA thought there: in a Le Guin/Wolfe mapping, Anarres (attempt at\nutopia)=Blue, and Urras (dystopia)=both Urth (old, over-exploited,\nhopeless) and Green (like capitalist A-Io in THE DISPOSSESSED, only a\nDarwinist Hell in place of a Social Darwinist one.)"
        },
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "H'mmm.  I think this underestimates the \"ambiguous\" of Le Guin's\nsubtitle: THE DISPOSSESSED is about two worlds each of which \n_claims_ to be \"utopian\" vis-a-vis the other, but neither quite\nmanages to be a utopia. I think the key to understanding THE \nDISPOSSESSED is an idea expressed (of all places) in THE BOOK OF \nTHE NEW SUN v.1 -- the passage of the lake of the dead in Hildegrin's\nboat, where Dorcas delivers herself of a little speech on how the\ngood and the evil in the world remain in a kind of balance between\ninternal and external. \n\nOf course, Le Guin isn't a Catholic, but move the idea in to her\nbelief-system and you have the key to THE DISPOSSESSED: each world \n_ought_ to be a Utopia, Urras because it has the resources, Anarres \nbecause it has the anarcho-Taoist philosophy: but neither quite makes \nit because it lacks what the other possesses. Each is dispossessed, \neach incomplete without the other. \n\nOf course, any simple mapping to THE DISPOSSESSED is going to be \nradically flawed because SHORT SUN contrasts four worlds, not two,\nand (counting roughly off the top of my head) at least ten systems \nof governance -- Viron's, New Viron's, Gaon's, Soldo's, Blanko's, \nthe village on Green, the inhumi city, Dorp, uh, the place at the\nend of the Whorl where Pig gets his eye, and the Commonwealth: all \ntheir governances are shown at least in miniature; all are offered\nto us in contrast with the others.\n\nH'mmm.\n\nDoes someone have handy their copy of SHADOW? It would be \ninteresting to look at SHORT SUN in comparison with the short \ntreatise on governance Severian recites to the Malrubius-\naquastor.\n\n--Dan'l\n\n\n*This is WHORL, for discussion of Gene Wolfe's Book of the Long Sun."
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
}