Challenge 604

Fun With Your New Dimensions

1. In Michael Murry”s “Sacred Surgical Strikes”:

   1. What is the rhyme scheme?
   2. What is the target of the satire?
   3. How does the poem fit thematically with other poems of Michael Murry”s?

2. In Jack Phillips Lowe’s “Open Availability”:

   1. What are the prospective employer’s priorities? What is really wanted: a human being or a robot?
   2. What changes in law and society might be made to remedy the social ill of underemployment without making it unaffordable?

3. In Glenn Gray’s “A Day in the Cornfield”:

   1. In what political climate would Dr. Taylor not be allowed to undertake her experiments on the shape-shifting gel from outer space? What response to the space aliens does the story imply is the “normal” response?

   2. The story concludes with Stew and Roxy ready to consummate their romance. But a sample of the gel from outer space escapes. In what settings might the story continue? What other conclusions might it lead to?

4. In Bill Prindle’s “Cogito, ergo Sim sum”:

   1. What physical senses do the “Simkins” seem to have? What senses do they appear not to have?

   2. Why might Dangerfield be labeled an arsonist but not a terrorist?

   3. Assuming that Dangerfield “uploads” himself to the reality of The Finger, what will he gain other than exchanging a kind of “Flatland” existence for a multidimensional “game”? Where does it end?

5. In Boghos L. Artinian’s and Don Webb’s “ Morphic Resonance”:

   1. All the incidents concerning the Internet have actually happened. What is happening today that might confirm the metaphysical speculation?

   2. In what way does “Morphic Resonance” echo thematically “Cogito, ergo Sim sum”?

Responses welcome!

Copyright © January 19, 2015 by Bewildering Stories
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