Challenge 253

Between the Crunchies and the Munchies

In Rachel Parsons’ “Facing the Twilight,” what kinds of comic stage “shtick” depict the characters as being far more unusual, in their own ways, than “Rhiannon the Nude”?
Jack Johnson’s “The Head of the Snake” seems to be two stories — or a story and a half — in one. What do you imagine is the second story, the one about the catastophe-causing aliens? What are they doing, and why? What might the reporter have to do with them?
At what point in the story can you guess that Roget is himself a clone in Lorna M. Kaine’s “The Imposter”?
What happens in a Big Crunch? Does time begin to run backward, as in section 9 of E. S. Strout’s “Blue Shift,” or does the universe simply begin to heat up again?
In Dan McNeil’s “Appetite,” why doesn’t the planet eat itself?