From: Jim Jordan <jbjordan@gnt.net>
Subject: Re: (urth) hellish hues
Date: Tue, 08 Jul 1997 00:32:29 


[Posted from URTH, a mailing list about Gene Wolfe's New Sun and other works]

>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. 

>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!")