Challenge 1003

Lead or a Dive?

1. In Kevin Broccoli’s Mayflower, Mango and Palm: What is a “Saturn dance”?

2. In Dee Artea’s Foraging for the Future: Does the story overstep Bewildering Stories’ “Dead Narrators” guideline? Debate the question by arguing both yes and no.

3. In Changming Yuan’s Emotional Curiosity:

   1. Why might the characters not be named?
   2. At an early point, the male and female characters were “re-educated” together as Red Guards. What cultural information about them does the historical reference imply?

4. In Richard Ong’s The Lonely Bride:

   1. Why might the clergy of medieval churches welcome and even cultivate spooky legends about their establishment?
   2. Once the “Lonely Bride” legend was established, how might the same clergy approach a reading of John 8:3-11 as a gospel lesson at mass?

5. In Ron Davidson’s A Dish With Bite:

   1. Who is Alice Finch?
   2. Can Art Langstrom hope to dissuade a gelatinous food monster by firing a small-calibre pistol at it?
   3. What are the tragic elements in the story? Are all the characters’ tragic flaws consummated?
   4. Since the food monster is non-human and inherently neither tragic nor comic, how might the plot be played entirely as a comedy?

6. In Brian Yapko, San Damien and the Red Daggers:

   1. Who and what are the “Numen”?
   2. Why is humanity marooned on Mars? What, apparently, has happened to Earth?
   3. What elements of history and world-building would you like to see recounted or explained, perhaps in a larger version of the story?
   4. How might the story be narrated in a dramatic form rather than in an epistolary mode?
   5. Could Miranda play a larger role than she does?

Responses welcome!

Copyright © July 3, 2023 by Bewildering Stories
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