Challenge 939

Dream on Demand

In Jon Adcock’s Prayers to Broken Stone: Could Jackson have carried out his clandestine surveillance mission without confronting the resistance cell openly?
In John Haymaker’s Papak’s Midwinter Kiss: Do any of the characters have any serious regrets?
In Charles David Taylor’s The End, Virtually:
1. How would you characterize Marjorie’s fantasies? Are they entirely hers or are they supplied “virtually”?
2. What kind of end-of-life fantasy might someone conceive of who did not have or was not inclined to have Marjorie’s strong emotions and sensual imagination? Could an imagination less vivid than Marjorie’s supply an analgesic needed for chronic physical pain?
In Valeriya Salt’s The Guardian of Twin Oaks:
1. What is the function of Elsse’s being a foreigner? Would anything in the story change substantially if she were British?
2. At what point should the reader suspect that Elsse’s dream characters are borrowed from Lewis Carrroll’s Alice in Wonderland and Through the Lookiing Glass? How do Elsse’s dream characters differ from the original?
3. Does the story overstep Bewildering Stories’ “dream stories” guideline?
4. Does Elsse ever hear a cogent explanation of her dream characters’ fear of the railway expansion and of electricity? Have railways or electricity affected the appreciation of Lewis Carroll’s original work in any way?
5. [Bonus question] The Alice stories are classics of both Victorian-age and world literature. What prominent representative of 19th-century nobility enthusiastically favoured the development of British railways?

Responses welcome!