{
  "export": {
    "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/81",
    "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": "urth",
  "thread": {
    "id": 81,
    "subject": "Hues of Hell",
    "messages": 1,
    "voices": 1,
    "first": "1997-07-04T08:12:41+00:00",
    "last": "1997-07-04T08:12:41+00:00"
  },
  "messages": [
    {
      "message_id": "<urth-v0002-0137@digest.urth.net>",
      "from": {
        "name": "Alice Turner",
        "address": "al at interport.net"
      },
      "date": "1997-07-04T08:12:41+00:00",
      "subject": "(urth) Hues of Hell",
      "in_reply_to": null,
      "reply_link": null,
      "blocks": [
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "SPOILERS, ESPECIALLY FOR THOSE PREPARED TO ENJOY STORY\n\n\nGood summary, Ron. My own reaction to this story (and, I'm afraid, to many\nof Wolfe's shorter stories) is one of irritation. To me, the conclusion\nwe're meant to draw---that the alien has somehow invaded the womb of\nMarilyn, the female crew member--and the emotion we're meant to infer,\napprehension of catastrophe, have not been earned. Hartwell is mistaken in\ncomparing the ending to that of 2001; it is quite the opposite, a cosmic\nRosemary's Baby situation. How do I know? Birds don't lie! I'm not being\nflippant; it seems clear to me that the bird (I thought it was a parrot,\nnot a macaw) is meant to be the only crew figure not subject to illusion,\nand therefore reliable.\n\nBut to me all the mumbo-jumbo about the Egg and the yolk and the sperm and\nplacental imagery (it's all there right out front) juxtaposed with the\n(possibly psychotic) male crew member's babble of hell and demons and\nshadows (the mother ship is, all too tellingly, the Shadow Show) seemed\nsuperficial and contrived. The story needed more room; it seems merely\nsketchy, an obvious sort of metaphor for the not very fresh observation\nthat every pregnant woman harbors an alien within her.\n\n-alga- "
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
}