{
  "export": {
    "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/whorl/147",
    "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": 147,
    "subject": "cold 'uns & hot",
    "messages": 1,
    "voices": 1,
    "first": "1997-03-07T02:08:00+00:00",
    "last": "1997-03-07T02:08:00+00:00"
  },
  "messages": [
    {
      "message_id": "<whorl-v0003-0206@digest.urth.net>",
      "from": {
        "name": "m.driussi",
        "address": "m.driussi at genie.com"
      },
      "date": "1997-03-07T02:08:00+00:00",
      "subject": "(whorl) cold 'uns & hot",
      "in_reply_to": null,
      "reply_link": null,
      "blocks": [
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "Reply:  Item #5703701 from WHORL at LISTS.BEST.COM@INET01#\n\nQuill,\n\nWelcome aboard!\n\nLast things first.  Re: what is rust?  Well, it is a highly addictive\ndrug that makes the user happy for a while.  Similar to cocaine, let's\nsay.  But if your question really is \"from what substance is it derived?\"\nthen I don't know--it does sound like it is extracted from chems, though,\ndoesn't it? <g>"
        },
        {
          "kind": "quote",
          "depth": 2,
          "text": "Spoiler Alert!<<"
        },
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "(Turn back!  Avert your eyes!  <brzzt>  Too late--I've invaded your\nmind through your profaned Sacred Window!)\n\nRe: speculation on Blood's dad, you wrote about Rose \"she promised not to\nreveal his identity,\" which might be true, I'm not sure.  But the more\nimportant quote I am sure of is, \"He [Blood's father] never knew\" (III,\nch. 10, 363).  Which sort of removes your torture scenario from the\npicture since the biological father (who ever he is) remains unaware of\nhis offspring in the form of Blood.\n\nNow jump to the front: I agree, there is something odd about Mint\nthat could be answered by her being another cold one (in line after\nAuk but before Incus).  Which is certainly easier than trying to make\nher into some new sort of chem (I guess it would amount to her being\na homunculus, a synthetic human, with a hair's difference between\nthat and an embryo-that's-been-tinkered-with or an\nembryo-that's-really-a-clone-of-somebody).\n\nRight, which means I'm back on that tired hobby horse, wondering\nabout how Mint can merge with Marble/Rose.  (GRANTED: the three of\nthem are weird sisters/norns to Silk.)  Now, for those readers who\nread NIGHTSIDE when it first came out (or before!), remember back\nwith me now: how from the very beginning there was this Marble/Rose\nthing, right from the enlightenment, and we all puzzled over it until\nlo, it was shown how it happened.  Now then, what I'm saying is this:\nnotice how, just as we're all comfortable with this incredible\nMarble/Rose deal, here comes a hint or two about Marble/Mint; we are\nback at square one, at the same puzzled moment when Marble/Rose was\nfirst introduced, but there are no more \"squares\" left ahead of us!\n\nThink about it for a moment.\n\nThanks!\n\nOkay.  Now back to \"the game of tracking Wolfe.\"  As you read and\nre-read some of the critical essays (especially John Clute's) written\nabout Wolfe's work, it becomes ever more clear how encrypted Wolfe's\nwork is.  One bit in Horn's \"My Defense\" that makes me laugh out\nloud: \"Fewer than I had expected have found fault with Silk's\nassertion that she [Mint] took her warlike character from the Goddess\nof Love, although it seems implausible to me\" (p. 373).  Hear that"
        },
        {
          "kind": "quote",
          "depth": 1,
          "text": "thwak!< of smilin' Gene hitting the reader upside the head?  Poor\nGene is getting a tad frustrated waiting for people to catch up, so\nhe's taken to teasing them. <g>"
        },
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "Of course, this opens up the vista of \"the adversarial relation\nbetween Gene Wolfe and the hapless reader.\"  Some readers,\nunderstandably, are very uneasy about the way Wolfe is sneaking\naround in the bushes all the time.  They seem to take it personally,\nlike it is all some kind of test or something.  (I base this on\nhaving talked to people who said as much.)  If people read for\nrecreational pleasure, and reading Wolfe is too much work, then they\nwon't read Wolfe.  If re-reading Wolfe is like doing a crossword\npuzzle, then some readers are happy enough to fill in as many as they\ncan on the first pass and then quit when that pleasure expires.  And\nthere are probably a lot of people who feel uneasy about crossword\npuzzle makers in the same \"adversarial\" way that some readers feel\nabout Wolfe. I suspect that to these readers, Wolfe's lure/plea for\nmore oracular reading (which I posted a few days ago) is taken as\na cheap trick to fool the reader (who falls for it) into searching\nfor \"hidden meaning\"; the trick being \"cheap\" because, to this way of\nthinking, there is no cryptic engineering going on at all, it is all\njust a trap to mess with the (gullible) reader's mind--and Wolfe is\nlaughing at those who fall for it.\n\nOther funny bits about Horn's defense: \"I had planned to call my\naccount _The Book of Silk_, and not Starcrossers' Landfall or any of\nthe other titles (many equally foolish) that have been suggested\"\n(ha!); after \"My Defense\" comes \"Afterward,\" a cunning play on\n\"Afterword\" (which is what it is); \"Afterward\" contains this gem:\n\"From the summit of the tor, he had a clear view of the strait\"\n(ha!).\n\nBack to the previously scheduled message: on to the twist of having\nKypris subsumed by Hyacinth.  While I acknowledge the two-way nature\nof god/mortal intercourse (this fact has been a cornerstone to much\nof my speculation), I think that, by \"the rules\" that seem to be in\noperation, if Ky was really Hy then the goddess would lose her powers\nand be instead like a fresh new godling learning how to grow into a\ngoddess.  (For example, track Mucor's development in this regard.)\nWhich would probably mean \"Road Kill\" in the Whorl's highly-charged,\nno-second-chances, god arena.\n\nRe: Quetzal's religion.  IMHO, basically Q has the same \"religion\"\nthat the Fliers have; which is the one Doctor Crane probably would\nhave adopted if he had ever faced the concrete reality of the gods.\n\nRe: Quetzal being \"instilled [with] an urgent need to get the people\nof the Whorl down to a planet,\" if he was instilled with anything it\nwould appear to have been the opposite, since he seems to be firmly\nin the Anti-Landfall Camp (of Many Strange Bedfellows).\n\nNew tangent (?): We question the cold ones.  Are they a \"representative\nsample\" of the population?  We have three clear cases: Mucor (a creepy\nTinkerbell), Silk (an unknown factor), and . . . a pride of lynxes.  Hmmm.\nFocus on the humans--are they supposed to be \"fixers\" like the Sleepers\n(who are to be woken up to fix things that have degraded accidentally\nor by malicious activity)?  Possible, but long term--embryo must be\nbrought to term, raised, educated, etc.--yet this is the way they talk\nabout Tusah's adopted heir, like some sort of \"secret weapon.\"\n\nGiven that the Window Technology was built in by Typhon, Granted that\npossession of bios and chems via Window was a part of this package\nrather than any sort of unforseen later development; it stands to\nreason that the embryos are specially designed \"god mounts\" for the\nVirtual Reality, Artificial Intelligence entity \"gods\" to ride once\nthey reach the target planet or any time before then if a crisis\nemerges.  This fits in quite well with the \"secret weapon\" aspect of\nthe cold ones and discards as being silly the idea of them being\ncraftsmanish \"fixers\" like the Sleepers.\n\nJust a thought.  And like most of my others, I'm not particularly\nwelded to it.\n\n=mantis\n\nQuestions or problems to whorl-owner at lists.best.com"
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
}