{
  "export": {
    "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/whorl/985",
    "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": 985,
    "subject": "sex secret",
    "messages": 1,
    "voices": 1,
    "first": "2000-08-28T12:09:44+00:00",
    "last": "2000-08-28T12:09:44+00:00"
  },
  "messages": [
    {
      "message_id": "<whorl-v0011-0194@digest.urth.net>",
      "from": {
        "name": "Robert Borski",
        "address": "rborski at charter.net"
      },
      "date": "2000-08-28T12:09:44+00:00",
      "subject": "(whorl) Re: sex secret",
      "in_reply_to": null,
      "reply_link": null,
      "blocks": [
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "alga having written:\n\n<In the next paragraph he says \"You feared that jungle, I know; so did I at\ntimes.\" I think the \"you\" is Sinew. But what on earth is \"our\" as in blood?\nYours and mine, Sinew because I'm your dad? Yours and mine, Krait, because\nyou just took a nibble from me and I'm sort of your dad\ntoo? Yours and mine, Outsider? The blood that you, Sinew, and Krait share\n(re his mother), part of which I contributed genetically (this is\nridiculous). It can't possibly be sexual, can it?  Twenty years ago? How the\nhell do they reproduce? Those women and \"brutal giants\" do seem like part of\na primitive fertility rite.>\n\nYour question about reproduction is one I've pondered myself, but mainly in\nthe Green-Blue-Green transmission route. Do I have this right? An inhuma\nflies to Blue from Green during a conjunction and then spends the next seven\nyears attempting to slake her blood thirst. During the next conjunction (or\nthe following one?), she returns to Green, where she mates with an inhumu\n(or might this happen while still on Blue?), reproduces, and the resultant\negg incubates in the uv-rich climate of Green until it hatches. (Are there\nno equatorial hot zones on Blue? Is Green that much closer orbitally to the\nsun?) This seems to me like an extremely awkward reproductive strategy--even\nif the inhumi lay multiple eggs. It also means in Krait's case that he must\nundertake the hazardous hejira to Blue probably during the first conjunction\nhe witnesses, but if he wants to reproduce go back again later. (\"Hmmm. Food\nor sex? Well, you can never be too thin.\") Also: how exactly does the\nblood-to-egg core personality transfer work? If I'm an inhuma, does the\nfirst, middle or last person I dine on imprint my offspring? And do the male\ninhumu's sero-victims contribute nothing?\n\nAll these questions notwithstanding, I'm still leaning toward the theory\nthat the inhumi secret will involve some physiological aspect of their\nbiology, either digestive or reproductive, and note the extensive use of\nsewer imagery in the series so far, from the fouled sewers in New Viron, to\nInclito's municipal wonders, to the Styx-like necropolis on Green. The Latin\nword for sewer, of course, is cloaca. Make of that what you will.\n\n<I hope I'm not awarded the dreaded Borski prize for this.>\n\nNah. Not nearly wild, speculative or loopy enough, alga. Try harder next\ntime.\n\nRobert Borski\n\n\n\n\n\n\n*This is WHORL, for discussion of Gene Wolfe's Book of the Long Sun."
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
}