"Hour of Trust" supernatural vs. mundane

Michael Andre-Driussi21 Feb 2002, 23:24original as archived

↰ answers Andy Robertson · by quotation

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Andy Robertson wrote: Maybe here is something actually "supernatural" here? Maybe the religion of the rebels, if that is what it is, actually allows them to turn their bodies into bombs, through meditation or feedback or something? It's a wild thought, but then I disagree about the human flamers being "minor". As I have posted before, I think they are expressing and proving a faith.

Yes, I think this is the reading that satisfied our friend Adam Stephanides (whom we haven't heard from since, hmmmm . . . check for burn marks!). That is to say (my sense of it, until Adam returns): Clio is History. She is a supernatural force breaking through into the mundane world without any bells and whistles except for this implausible immolation bomb-thing. She has been on the side of the corporations but now she is switching. So a primary sticking-point of interpretation, that of "realism," is thrown out. Likewise is "motive" and the issue of whether Clio is a mole or not, or anything like that, including politics and meaning. Clio is History and she does as History is said to do. Fickle, capricious, all that stuff. She may be enabling the ken-kins their immolation power as a way of testing the corporations (making her, yes, a sort of fiery Kali and the ken-kins her faithful devotees), or the ken-kins may have created their own technological device and Clio is borrowing the effect without the mundane substance in order to signal how her favor has changed. Again, this is very much like "The Haunted Boardinghouse," but in that case there were plenty of otherworldly details to establish the supernatural element beyond all doubt. (Have I mentioned yet that "Hour of Trust" might actually be linked to "The Haunted Boardinghouse"? What if the hairy rebellion is followed by incursions from the Mexican Army? Since that is the historical linchpin of America's future in "The Haunted Boardinghouse" . . . ) (The ken-kins shirt of flame reminds me of those poisoned/fire shirts of classical myth--the one with blood of Nessus, for example, which got Herakles.) Peters thus gets broiled for, ahem, bucking History. =mantis=

Roy C. Lackey23 Feb 2002, 03:15original as archived

↳ follows Michael Andre-Driussi · by subject

mantis quoted:

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Andy Robertson wrote:

Maybe here is something actually "supernatural" here? Maybe the religion of the rebels, if that is what it is, actually allows them to turn their bodies into bombs, through meditation or feedback or something? It's a wild thought, but then I disagree about the human flamers being "minor". As I have posted before, I think they are expressing and proving a faith.

[snip]

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and wrote: So a primary sticking-point of interpretation, that of "realism," is thrown out. Likewise is "motive" and the issue of whether Clio is a mole or not, or anything like that, including politics and meaning. Clio is History and she does as History is said to do. Fickle, capricious, all that stuff.

I have to agree with mantis that, in the absence of clearer indications that the supernatural is involved, we have to look to a "realism" interpretation. [snip]

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(The ken-kins shirt of flame reminds me of those poisoned/fire shirts of classical myth--the one with blood of Nessus, for example, which got Herakles.)

Again, this story dates from the 1970s, in the wake of the war in Vietnam, and that clinging fire reminds me of one of the most famous photographs of the Vietnam era, that of the naked girl running down a road, trying to get away from the napalm that is burning on her. -Roy