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Re: Recommend Me a Good Book

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  Re: Recommend Me a Good Book D B Davis <g@crcomp.net> - 2018-05-25 01:13 +0000

#492502 — Re: Recommend Me a Good Book

Dorothy wrote:
>In article <20150911b@crcomp.net>, Don wrote:
>>
>>The backstory of "two by two, hands of blue" marginally intrigues me.
>>Perhaps Whedon simply notes the enhanced chemical resistance of nitrile
>>gloves and then puts them on his villains as a visual hand armor
>>advantage. End of story.
>
>Could Whedon possibly been building on a half-remembered memory
>of Cordwainer Smith's "Think Blue, Count Two"?

Thank you for a memorable short story. It's my first Smith. :)
       
Smith's story contains lots of parallels to Whedon's. The invented new
crimes of *Old Twenty-two* - "crimes which a million years of earth's
old wickedness had never brought to the surface of man before," aptly
fits the behavior of Whedon's Reavers. The ugliness of Reavers surpasses
that of Talatashar.

Whedon actually freezes his heroine River and puts her into a pod. He
has River's brother use a trigger word to make her pass out when she
starts acting out.

But River's "two by two, hands of blue" vastly differs from Veesey's
"conjuring spell" of "Think Blue, Count Two." In River's case it's more
of a dreadful foreboding.

Addendum:

"Two Blue Hands" (Roueche) brought to mind this old thread. The Roueche
presents a medical mystery that begins with cyanosis. 

✍

Thank you,

-- 
Don

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