Challenge 279

Packing Heat

1. Crystalwizard’s Spellbound:

   1. For what audience is Spellbound most appropriate? If it’s teenage girls, do you think Chapter 13 is appropriate for a 13-year old?
   2. Lynda first meets Darnell in Chapter 11. In what way is Lynda’s conversation with him incoherent?
   3. In Chapter 20, would the scene where Darnell controls the vote counting gain in realism if the poll workers were depicted as counting “hanging chads”?
   4. Chapter 15 reveals that Jason is telepathic. Why does Lynda not seem to care?
   5. Who does Lynda seem to feel is more important to her: Jason or Darnell? Is it plausible that Jason and Lynda have to rush into marriage? What does Lynda’s state of mind during the wedding imply about her character and her feelings for Jason?

2. In Chapter 7 of Bertil Falk’s Under the Green Sun of Slormor, what do the memories have in common?

3. In what ways is the imagery particularly striking in all of O. J. Anderson’s “Dead Wrong”?

4. Is Chris Chapman’s “How Papa Gheddy Saved the Village” really a children’s story? If so, for what age group might it be most appropriate? In what way is it a complex frame story?

5. In Cat Connor’s “Tracks,”:

   1. On the train, Jetta worries briefly about a cryptic e-mail telling of explosives apparently stolen from an industrial site. Jetta is in no way connected to the theft. Is her remembering the news item necessary to the plot?
   2. At the end of the story, is the “miracle” really necessary? Does it lend Jetta a kind of magical quality she might share with Bill? Or does the miracle step over into sentimentality?
   3. Is the moral of the story “Don’t complain about minor bumps, they might be worse?” If not, what might it be?

6. In Joseph P. Kenyon’s “Listening,” the radio messages from Arcturus reach Lizzie in the year 1963. In what Earth year did the messages originate: or ?

7. Does the ending of Lynn Mann’s “Water Rights” fit the rest of the story? Would you have chosen another ending? Is the political background story convincing?

   The chador and, especially, veil originated in the ancient Middle East as emblems of high social class; only later did they become a religious requirement. Are such dress and customs inevitable in societies living in an arid climate?

8. In what ways is Michael J A Tyzuk’s “Just a Bunch of Hot Air” quite un-Canadian?

9. In Jennifer Walmsley’s “Mother’s Not Home,” why is Emrys so protective of his mother?

10. Mel Waldman’s “Ghetto-Land”:

    1. Does the poem gain or lose anything from the biographical note?
    2. How does “Ghetto-Land, USA” differ from others around the world? Does the geographical reference add realism, or does it make the poem provincial?
    3. What changes would be needed to give the poem a “rap” style?

11. Why is Harry Lang’s “Blind Moon” written in a style reminiscent of haiku?

Responses welcome!

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