{
  "export": {
    "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/whorl/601",
    "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": 601,
    "subject": "SPOILER for BETA-2!",
    "messages": 1,
    "voices": 1,
    "first": "1999-04-29T17:09:24+00:00",
    "last": "1999-04-29T17:09:24+00:00"
  },
  "messages": [
    {
      "message_id": "<whorl-v0009-0103@digest.urth.net>",
      "from": {
        "name": "Robert Patterson",
        "address": "rpatterson at promus.com"
      },
      "date": "1999-04-29T17:09:24+00:00",
      "subject": "RE: (whorl) SPOILER for BETA-2!",
      "in_reply_to": null,
      "reply_link": null,
      "blocks": [
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "Warning: this post is a spoiler for Samuel R. Delany: The Ballad of Beta-2\n\n\"Mantis\" may be correct in that the colonists have left the ship. It has\nbeen awhile since I read it, but as I recall the action takes place at least\nin part on board the ship. The basic premise is that the generation-ship\nleft Earth right before the discovery of FTL travel thru hyperspace, so this\nship is the only human ship ever to have traveled across an interstellar\nvoid in normal space.\n\nIt turns out that they had a near-disastrous encounter with some kind of (as\nI recall) highly intelligent energy life form that only lives far away from\ngravity wells. Humanity has never discovered it because they only travel\nthrough normal space near stars. I'll send more specifics when I get home\nand can look at the book again."
        },
        {
          "kind": "sig",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "Robert Patterson\n\nhttp://home.midsouth.rr.com/rpatterson\n\n\n-----Original Message-----\nFrom: whorl-errors at lists.best.com [mailto:whorl-errors at lists.best.com]On\nBehalf Of Michael Andre-Driussi\nSent: Thursday, April 29, 1999 2:58 PM\nTo: whorl at lists.best.com\nSubject: (whorl) re: BETA-2"
        },
        {
          "kind": "quote",
          "depth": 1,
          "text": "Don't forget\n\nSamuel R. Delany: THE BALLAD OF BETA 2\n\nThis would fall sorta into the \"Colonies from \" category, though like Long\nSun, the colonists still live in the ship."
        },
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "Good call, Robert Patterson! Refresh my memory further: IIRC, BB2 is about\nan anthropologist (from Terra or the civilized sphere) who is examining the\nhulk of the colony ship in orbit--I remember he translated one doorway\nlabel as \"sacrifice to the water gods\" or something like that, a literal\ntake on \"navigation.\"  His primary clues are contained within the epic poem\nof the colonists (I thought they were on the ground by then).  So it is a\n\"discovery of Troy\" type of deal, in the sense of using garbled heroic\npoetry to figure out what happened on the long voyage.\n\nSo spill it: what happened to the colonists (I remember something about\nsome unexpected radiation washing over the ship out in the void)?  And any\nother details you can recollect (how long was the voyage, what target star,\netc.).\n\n=mantis=\n\n\n\n*This is WHORL, for discussion of Gene Wolfe's Book of the Long Sun."
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
}