{
  "export": {
    "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/whorl/354",
    "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": 354,
    "subject": "Digest whorl.v006.n005",
    "messages": 1,
    "voices": 1,
    "first": "1997-06-17T20:51:04+00:00",
    "last": "1997-06-17T20:51:04+00:00"
  },
  "messages": [
    {
      "message_id": "<whorl-v0006-0369@digest.urth.net>",
      "from": {
        "name": "Kevin McGuire",
        "address": "kmcguire at itw.com"
      },
      "date": "1997-06-17T20:51:04+00:00",
      "subject": "(whorl) Re: Digest whorl.v006.n005",
      "in_reply_to": null,
      "reply_link": null,
      "blocks": [
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "Hi folks,\n\nLots of interesting thoughts these past few days - it has been a real \npleasure reading them.  \n\nOn Journeys Begun on False Pretenses:\nOne theme that struck me is in both the New Sun and Long Sun books \nwas how the initial journey is motivated by something that turns out \nto be false, and yet the journey proves worthwhile.  In the New Sun \nbooks, the false coin of Vodalus serves to start Severian down his \nrevolutionary (sorry) path.  \n\nIn the Long Sun books, Silk follows \"false\" (in a theological sense)\ngods, and is often quite wrong in what he believes to be true, yet\nhis actions ultimately are for the good of the people under his\nprotection, though he doesn't actually restart the sun or anything\n_truly_ spectacular.  \n\nSilk's paganism (though certainly more technological than Latro's)\nstrikes me as similar in some ways to the Soldier books, in that\nGene seems to be making Silk at the start of the Long Sun a \"virtuous\npagan.\"  Which is to say a good person who died before Christianity,\nand thus without the salvation of the Church - these were the folks\nthat Dante consigned to the first (and not altogether unpleasant)\ncircle of Hell.  Wolfe believes that those who came before us were\nintelligent people whose ideas about their world were entirely\nreasonable given their circumstances, and in the Whorl, what could\nbe more reasonable than believing in gods who actually appear.  Silk\nis the transition state from Latro's vivid pagan world-view to\nSeverian's christian one. \n\nOn a more frivolous note - is there any connection between \nTyphon/Piaton and that episode of the Simpsons where Mr. Burns head \nis grafted onto Homer's body?  \n\n\"But Homer, tomorrow we are meeting with Queen Beatrix of the\nNetherlands\"\nKevin McGuire    |\"Human beings are perhaps never more frightening than\nPhiladelphia, PA | when they are convinced beyond doubt that they are right\"\n                 |    --Laurents van der Post"
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
}