Challenge 1015

Form and Function

1. In Patrick Honovich’s Roses in Winter: Why does Setet, who is exhausted from his long errand, have to suffer through Master Tellrus’s lengthy exposition? Can’t the master of the Verrin School abide a small transition and wait till the morrow? What does the chapter reveal about Tellrus?

2. In Asenath Grey’s Suitable Skin:

   1. Why might the sisters’ natural state not be described, i.e. what they look like when not inhabiting human bodies? What was the reaction of a person who saw one?

   2. The story could have been an intermediate chapter in a three-part novella, but it doesn’t need such length. How is the sisters’ backstory implied? How are readers enabled to foresee an ending beyond the encounter with Morris?

   3. Can you cite other horror stories that are told from the point of view of the monster or spectre?

3. In Bill Kowaleski’s Just a Minor Firmware Upgrade: Inkohatum explains how the Sirians’ human-origin story fits that of the anti-evolution, creationist sect. Mightn’t creationists have at least one reservation concerning the nature of humanity’s creator?

4. In Charles C. Cole’s The Thing in the Apple Tree:

   1. What, exactly, is the thing in the apple tree? If it’s a star, would it necessarily be the symbol of a particular sect?

   2. Religions are of different types, e.g. salvationist or observationist. Would Hup Belmont’s form of “listening” be accepted or even understood by everyone?

5. In Michael Schulman’s Midnight Pickup:

   1. What are “Nixems”?
   2. What is the “Scheme”? What was Lowell up to?

6. In Shauna Checkley’s Mother Nature: What is the unifying metaphor in the poem? How else could nature be depicted?

7. In Cassandra O’Sullivan Sachar’s Crafting Plot in Horror: Might there be an implicit cultural bias in the author’s enthusiastic preference for the style of modern horror fiction? Before the 20th century, literature was often read aloud in public or in royal halls, or in cenacles or, less formally, in groups of family and friends. How might the new visual technologies of cinema and television have changed the very concepts of prose style and plot?

   
   

   Responses welcome!

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