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From: "Robert Borski" <rborski@coredcs.com> Subject: (urth) Hues, HORARS Date: Sat, 11 Jul 1998 20:10:34 A couple of people have suggested that "All the Hues of Hell" is somehow related to "Silhouette," but I'd like to suggest it's the fugue sequel to still another story--"The HORARS of War." (Fugue here means reflective/refractive, not necessarily directly related; cf. the four "island" stories in THE WOLFE ARCHIPELAGO. Yet another operative description might be "Shadow Play.") Consider the follow correspondences, obversed and otherwise. "War is hell." The Egg = the command bunker. Polyaris = the ornithopter (like "Polaris," a weapon of war). Brenner = Jansen (both names are Dutch, but in Hues it's Jansen who "deviates" from his "programing" rather than 2910.) Lieutenant Kyle = cyborg Kappa Upsilon Lambda 23011 (aka "Kyle;" note too how 23011 recalls the serial numbers of the HORARS.) Shadow world = the mud of HORARS and 2910's eclipsed vision ("There's a sort of black stuff all around the sides when I see.") Both stories share Nativity imagery. From HORARS "A star in the east for men not born of women" to Marilyn's alien/immaculate conception. (Both share a lot of other religious imagery, which is probably why some people--perhaps rightly--see links between "Hues" and "Silhouettes.") Pinocchio and Punch, the robot tanks, in HORARS, play off of Shadow Show, the ship in Hues. (Who is Gepetto in each?) And lastly, there's Marilyn's attraction to cybernetic Kyle. Is this what's driven human Jansen insane--his wife's potential sexual dalliance with robot Mandingo? This is echoed by 2910's opinion that more psychological damage could be done to the humans in his outpost by dropping propaganda shells that de-emphasized "the distaste they were supposed to feel at being 'confined with half-living flesh still stinking of chemicals'" and instead "played up sex." Is HORARS ("whores") the deranged Freudian dream of Jansen? Is "Hues" the battle-psychosis-abetted nightmare of Brenner? Or do I have dreams and dreamers reversed? And what are both stories *really* about? Robert Borski (who also believes "Eyebem" may be part of the same story cycle) *More Wolfe info & archive of this list at http://www.urth.net/urth/