hellish hues
The Urth list — 3 messages, 3 voices, 06 Jul 1997
https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/85
Matthew Freestone06 Jul 1997, 13:27original
Hi,
A few more points on 'Hues...'
Nutria:
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Moreover, it is clear that Kyle (largely a machine) wants Marilyn. Did he kill Skip? The implications are that he did.
Where did you infer this from? Near the end of the story, Marilyn asks Kyle, 'Can you cure him (Skip)?'. Kyle answers, 'I think so...' Surely this implies he's still alive. Or do you think Kyle is lying? If so, how did he get away with the murder in what seems to be a pretty small ship?
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When the shadow man dies, Marilyn feels her baby move. Clearly, the shadow man has moved into her womb. Antichrist is soon to be born.
I agree with this, and that it's the fundamental point of the story. In particular, Polyaris' cry of 'Danger! Fire! Flood!' made me think of the apocalypse.
Alga:
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(I thought it was a parrot, not a macaw)
Definitely a macaw, on the first page: 'like all macaws, Polyaris doted on microgravity.'
Ron:
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The shadow being is kept in some type of stasis field, not called that but referred to as a "yolk;" this "yolk" only appears when the shadow being is brought on board.
I thought what was happening here was that the yolk was just part of the shadow matter (a theorised form of dark matter that only interacts with our universe through gravitation, hence the fact that it can only be seen using visualisers linked to the gravity field generators) the crew picked up before they got the shadow man/demon.
One final quote:
"Marilyn asked, 'How does he look, Ky?'. 'Like hell,' Kyle muttered."
And one question:
What's the film Kyle is thinking of when he tells Skip that for as long as he is ill, 'I am the master.'?
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↳ follows, by subject match Matthew Freestone
3 quoted lines · 1–2 deep
Nutria:
Moreover, it is clear that Kyle (largely a machine) wants Marilyn. Did he kill Skip? The implications are that he did.
Where did you infer this from? Near the end of the story, Marilyn asks Kyle, 'Can you cure him (Skip)?'. Kyle answers, 'I think so...' Surely this implies he's still alive. Or do you think Kyle is lying? If so, how did he get away with the murder in what seems to be a pretty small ship?
If I'm right (hey, who knows?), Kyle has been doing a lot of lying. But Skip claims to have died on the mother ship, so if Kyle did it (or arranged for it -- I note that Skip does not accuse him directly), he did it there.
2 quoted lines
And one question:
What's the film Kyle is thinking of when he tells Skip that for as long as he is ill, 'I am the master.'?
"The Day the Earth Stood Still," from "Farewell to the Master," by -- uh, oh, my 47 years are catching up with me. But hey, is "I am the master" from the film? I remember it as the last line of the story, but not from the film. Did Wolfe slip up? (The story is in the classic anthology of the golden age, Adventures in Space and Time by McNealy and Comas (?)).
If you don't know, Klaatu is the ambassador to earth from the galactic civilization, and he is accompanied by a robot named Gort. Everyone thinks Gort is just a servant, but he is actually a member of the robot-warrior corps that rules (supervises, polices) the galactic civilization -- in the film, anyway. The original story has an O'Henry ending, in which Gort informs us that we have mis-read the story all along, and that he is the master of Klaatu (the humanoid ambassador). Very Wolfean.
Nutria. (Klaatu, verada niktu!)
(Listen to the thereminvox melody and chord progressions in "Day the Earth" and you'll hear them again occasionally in "Mars Attacks!")
↳ follows, by subject match Jim Jordan
In a message dated 97-07-08 17:36:19 EDT, Nutria writes:
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"The Day the Earth Stood Still," from "Farewell to the Master," by -- uh,
oh, my 47 years are catching up with me. But hey, is "I am the master"
from
3 quoted lines
the film? I remember it as the last line of the story, but not from the
film. Did Wolfe slip up? (The story is in the classic anthology of the
golden age, Adventures in Space and Time by McNealy and Comas (?)).
"Farewell to the Master" was by Harry Bates, I believe. And that marvelous anthology is Adventures in Time and Space, edited by Raymond Healy and J. Francis McComas (the latter a founding editor of F&SF).
Rich Horton
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