{
  "export": {
    "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/88",
    "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": 88,
    "subject": "more hellish hues",
    "messages": 1,
    "voices": 1,
    "first": "1997-07-08T09:42:12+00:00",
    "last": "1997-07-08T09:42:12+00:00"
  },
  "messages": [
    {
      "message_id": "<urth-v0002-0145@digest.urth.net>",
      "from": {
        "name": "Ron Crown",
        "address": "crownrw at slu.edu"
      },
      "date": "1997-07-08T09:42:12+00:00",
      "subject": "(urth) more hellish hues",
      "in_reply_to": null,
      "reply_link": null,
      "blocks": [
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "Although in general terms, I can buy some type of generic apocalyptic\nscenario for this story, I think the evidence is thin at best for the\n\"antichrist\" motif; the shadow being is only described as \"demonic\" and\ndoes not have any other (anti)messianic traits that I can pick up. \nWolfe did use the number \"666\" _explicitly_ in Fifth Head; I don't see\nany clues for treating the number 230011 as equivalent to it; various\nrelationships between these numbers are possible if, in fact, we are to\ndo anything with it.  And Marilyn=Mary is surely a stretch; Mother Mary\nas the bearer of antichrist?  That would certainly be bringing the\nantichrist motif to new heights (or depths, take your pick).\n\nAlso, the machines haven't completely taken over; Kyle has to get\nMarilyn to agree to imposing restraint on Skip (i.e. keeping him in his\nharness) when it appears he may be psychotic.  And the \"Director\" only\n\"advises restraint.\"\n\nAs it turns out, a macaw is a kind of parrot so Alga's memory was\ncorrect after all!  According to Webster's 3rd International, the macaw\nbelongs to the genus _ara_; could this be behind the -aris in Polyaris?\nPerhaps this plus \"Polly want a cracker\" lies behind Polyaris.  What\nactually occurred to me as I read the story was the North Star, Polaris,\nas a navigational guide (Polyaris as a beacon, so to speak); also, I\nthought of the canaries miners used to take down in mines to warn them\nwhen the air was getting bad.\n\nOn Kyle:  It seems pretty clear that we're supposed to do something\nGreek with this name since the letters kappa-upsilon-lambda are spelled\nout.  Wolfe's transliteration would then match the one he used for the\nGreek word hyle (in the story \"The Death of Hyle\") which means \"matter.\"\nBut in the case of \"hyle,\" there is an exact correspondence between the\ntransliteration and the Greek term; there is no Greek word that I could\nfind that matches \"kyle\" in the same way as \"hyle;\" Alga's \"roll\" comes\nas close as anything.  (The first sentence of the story is \"Three with\n_Egg_ roll, Kyle thought.\"  That would be a rather crude pun--if that's\nnot tautologous).\n\nOn rereading this story, what strikes me is how 30s pulpish it all\nsounds--Campbellian superscience (gravitic beams and so forth); there is\neven a reference to Charles Fort and (I think) a humorous allusion to\nWeinbaum's A Martian Odyssey (ostriches on Mars who are pests).  And the\nbright colors (especially of Polyaris) could put one in mind of a Frank\nPaul cover, I suppose.  This kind of thing makes it difficult for me to\nbelieve that Wolfe was really being very serious with this story; it is\ntoo thin to carry its freight of supposedly apocalyptic baggage.\n\nOne final note: this story originally appeared in the Byron Preiss\nedited volume _The Universe_ where essays on astronomy, cosmology, etc.\nwere paired with stories.  Wolfe's story is paired with a James Trefil\nessay on \"The New Physics and the Universe\" which has a passing\nreference to dark matter.  I obviously don't know how the volume was put\ntogether; whether the writers ready the science essay and then wrote a\n\"speculation\" (as it is designated in the book) based on that or what. \nHowever, Wolfe was obviously not interested in serious scientific\nspeculation (IMHO), his \"speculation\" appears to be much more\nmetaphysical than physical.\n\nOne more thing just occurred to me: someone asked about the movie\nallusion re the line \"Call me master\"; could this be to Harry Bates'\nstory \"Farewell to the Master\" which was made into the movie \"The Day\nthe Earth Stood Still?\"  The story had an ironic point lost in the movie\nwhich was that the robot was the actual master when all along the reader\nis assuming it is the servant.  That would certainly support the\n\"machines in charge\" line but since that is missing from the movie;\nperhaps there is another movie in view here?\n\nRon Crown\ncrownrw at slu.edu"
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
}