Challenge 920

Here Comes the Neighborhood

In Charles C. Cole’s My New Neighbor From Outer Space:
1. What is Six’s language proficiency? Does he make any grammatical errors?
2. Why does Six not resemble any of the character types in Space Aliens as Metaphor?
In Tim Frank’s Mass Hysteria:
1. Does the military have any function other than to collect bodies and serve as an object of speculation?
2. Would the music be anything other than loud and unpleasant without the rainbow-colored drug pill?
3. Do any particular musical genres induce mass hysteria at the rave?
4. Is the rave an experiment? If so, who is conducting it, and for what purpose?
5. Even if Max survives, he will be horribly disfigured. Does he have a tragic flaw or is he merely a well-meaning victim of drug-induced violence?
In Douglas Young’s The Revelation of Paisley Parker:
1. What is the academic rank of Paisley Parker’s English instructor? What might it explain about his behavior?
2. At what point does the instructor’s interest in Paisley cease to seem prurient?
3. For a student in an introductory course, Paisley is extraordinarily well-read. And yet her extensive experience with literature has not supported her proficiency in writing. What kind of learning handicap might account for the anomaly?
In Oonah V. Joslin’s Cruises of Fond Memory:
1. Do the cruises seem to be listed in any particular order, e.g. chronological?
2. What sensory effects are evoked in the poem?
In Jack Merwin’s The Three Kings of Folly: The Widowed King: Does the narrator turn into a spider or a kind of cephalopod? If either, to what effect?
In G. Allen Wilbanks’ Two More Years: Aside from the airlocks and electronics, does the outer-space classroom differ markedly from a typical schoolroom of the early 20th century?

Responses welcome!