Challenge 636

Giddyap, Khan

1. In this issue, the prose and poetry, taken together, contain three thematic pairs of people, animals or things. What are the three pairs? Might there be a fourth pair? Even more?

2. In E. H. Young’s “It Brought the Snow”:

   1. Does Boris’ mother know about his “condition”? Does Alex?
   2. Did the “hunter” know about Boris before coming to Ketchikan? If so, why did he come unarmed?
   3. When Alex finds the body in the woods, why does he not wonder why there is not a second one?
   4. What happens to the “hunter” at the end?

3. In Matthew K. Bernstein’s “The Collision,” the point of view changes twice: from first- to third-person between parts 1 and 2 and, at the end of part 2, back to first-person, with a different narrator:

   1. Why is it impossible to maintain a single first-person narrator throughout?
   2. How might the point of view changes be reduced from two to one? Is the second “I” narrator identified clearly enough?
   3. The collision of “continents” obviously has nothing to do with the movement of tectonic plates. What does “collision” mean metaphorically?

4. In Matthew Laing’s “Fire Flight,” what “larger story” is implied by the events in the poem? How might it begin and end?

5. In Anna Ruiz’ “Where Do Dreamers Go?”: In the Star Trek film The Wrath of Khan (1982), Khan is played by Ricardo Montalban; in the 2013 film, by Benedict Cumberbatch:

   1. Do either of the two actors’ nostrils flare?
   2. Does either resemble a horse?
   3. In the poem, what might the horse be wroth about?

6. In Ronald Linson’s “Snowmen”:

   1. The narrator seems to be engaging in a kind of extreme sport. What is the prize for winning or even finishing the race?
   2. Why might the narrator seem somewhat unfit to participate in the event?
   3. Is “Snowmen” a story or a vignette?

Responses welcome!

Copyright © September 14, 2015 by Bewildering Stories
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