{
  "export": {
    "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/whorl/794",
    "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": 794,
    "subject": "Short sun foreshadowing in Exodus",
    "messages": 1,
    "voices": 1,
    "first": "2000-03-31T12:16:16+00:00",
    "last": "2000-03-31T12:16:16+00:00"
  },
  "messages": [
    {
      "message_id": "<whorl-v0010-0281@digest.urth.net>",
      "from": {
        "name": "David Wells",
        "address": "adw at ovum.com"
      },
      "date": "2000-03-31T12:16:16+00:00",
      "subject": "(whorl) Short sun foreshadowing in Exodus",
      "in_reply_to": null,
      "reply_link": null,
      "blocks": [
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "Have the foreshadowing phrases in the last few pages of Exodus been\ndiscussed? During my (perhaps sketchy) flit through the archives I couldn't\nfind anywhere they had, so, in no particular order:\n\n\t1) [Horn writes, in the first person for almost the first time]\n\"Here I close my defense, having (as I hope) satisfied the demands of my\ncritics\"\n\n\t??? Any ideas what this means ???\n\n\t2) [describing Silk] \"a man well above average height, with a clear,\nsomewhat pale complexion, bright blue eyes, and straw-colored hair which\nwould never lie flat. A slender man, but not a slow or weak one. He will\nhave a scar upon his back where the needle left it, and may have faint scars\non his right arm, left by the beak of the vulture [...]\"\n\n\tHmmm. So why does Horn decide to describe Silk so carefully during\nthe last few words of his epic chronicle(*)? And what is this \"not a slow or\nweak one\" business about?\nGiven that the Book of Horn is essentially a religious tract/gospel it may\nbe that he feels motivated to provide believers with a \"messiah identikit\"\nto warn them against Silk-pretenders. (It would be ironic if this\nbackfires... It assumes that Silk's spirit doesn't switch bodies. You see\nwhat I mean).\n[Is there a precedent for this in religious/mystical writings, by the way?\nI.e. \"ye shall know him by this...\"?]\n\n\t3) \"[Horn speaking] 'He [Sinew] should be home by this time'. [a few\nsentences later...] something dark flitted between Horn and the whorl that\nhad been his, and he shuddered\"\n\n\tThis seems to me to be a comparatively clear foreshadowing of a\nSinew/inhumu \"meeting\".\n\n\t4) Somewhere not long before the end of Exodus (sorry, couldn't find\nit) Horn comments, I think, that the inhumi are \"no more intelligent than\ndogs\". I found this very interesting at the time, because\n\t- it seemed to me to suggest that the colonists were in for a hard\ntime. Since we know that Quetzal had managed to reach a senior rank in the\nWhorl's (curiously Catholic :-) ecclesiastical hierarchy, the\nwildly-unrealistic prejudice (as I took it at the time) that they were\nextremely unintelligent seemed to bode poorly for the colonists.\n\t- on the other hand it could have been a keen satire on organized\nreligion. Which would have been very amusing. But unlikely given the\ncontext...\n\n\tBut now this also seems like foreshadowing. (?)\n\nComments?\n\n(old) newt\n\n(*) I was tempted here to use the word \"fable\". Hmmm...\n\n*This is WHORL, for discussion of Gene Wolfe's Book of the Long Sun."
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
}