Challenge 526

Sometimes a Bone is Just a Bone

1. Joanna Weston’s “Liese and the Numbers from Blue” is a kind of encrypted fairy tale. Can you supply the key to the allusions?

2. In Prospero Pulma, Jr.’s “The Captives,” who and where are the “captives,” and why are they captive?

3. In Bill Bowler’s “The House of Mammoth Bones”:

   1. Why does Zak steal Wolf’s shaman’s staff?
   2. What is Zak’s motivation for his crime spree?
   3. What does the wolf pup know about the staff that Zak does not? What is the real secret of Wolf’s mystical powers?

4. In Martin Kerharo’s The Dohani War, chapter 19: “Revolution”:

   1. In view of all the geopolitical circumstances, is the frontier planets’ wave of secessions plausible?
   2. In chapter 16, “Adaptation,” Jane tells Dexter about the “prison planet.” In chapter 19, it is ironically renamed “Alcatraz” and becomes a Dohani protectorate. What might its peculiar situation and circumstances portend for future human-Dohani relations?
   3. In the Epilogue, Dexter’s and Jane’s child Lucy is born as the first human-Dohani hybrid. How do you imagine her future might affect the future of humanity?
   4. How does The Dohani War resemble the stories that Dexter tells in chapter 16?

Responses welcome!

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