Challenge 956

Gapsbridge

At the two-thirds point of Channie Greenberg’s The Ill-Advised Adventures of Jim-Jam O’Neily: readers may wonder whether it is a novel. Might it not be, rather, a collection of scenarios summarized for future expansion into a universe of related short stories?
In Alcuin Fromm’s To Die Like a Man:
1. Do any of the characters know that the accident has effectively booby-trapped the spaceship Callia Mae?
2. Even if the cargo hold had been equipped with a security camera, how might the narrative have realistically circumvented it in order to preserve the plot as it is?
3. In view of the story’s moral, what does “like a man” actually mean? How does it fit the author’s pen name?
In Charles C. Cole’s Nerd King and Prom Queen: What causes Clifford and Nancy to overcome in one meeting the social gulf that had existed between them decades earlier?
In Jeffrey Greene’s Mr. Maphead:
1. When Gregory’s “older self” threatens to shoot himself unless younger Gregory says what he wants, why does younger Gregory yield to the manipulation and say “Nothing”?
2. At the end, what information does Gregory’s mirror image convey?
3. What does Gregory learn from his experience with Mr. Maphead? Does the story overstep Bewildering Stories’ “Dream Stories” guideline?