Challenge 758

Play That Chord Again

In Ada Fetters’ “No Do-Overs”:
1. What does Tara want, and why does she say Cam can’t give it to her?
2. What irony — or ironies — might be found in the name of Tara’s cult, the “Order of Accord”?
3. Why does Zeezie object to Cam’s undergoing the “Do-Over” operation?
4. What does the operation actually accomplish in terms of Cam’s memory?
5. Why might Cam undergo an operation rather than conventional psychotherapy? Does the operation imply that Cam’s case is hopeless or does itserve as a dramatic device, to summarize what therapy might do for him?
In JM Williams’ “The Sorcerer’s Bargain,” the Stone Age people would speak a language as grammatically complex — in its own way — as any other language. How would its vocabulary differ from that of modern English other than in the literal words and their meanings?
In D. L. Wells’ “The Swiped Shades”:
1. Does the narrator, Thomas Hamilton, ever get into room 47?
2. Hamilton’s abductor perpetrates a lot of violence and “blood & gore.” Is the action gratuitous or indispensable to the plot?
3. Do the aliens’ eyes seem sufficiently frightening to cause the public to flee in panic?
4. Does the abductor necessarily tell the truth about having a Silurian-civilization origin on Earth? Does it matter where his species comes from?
5. What does the story imply about the nature of “aliens,” i.e. the Other?
6. Space invaders usually represent one of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse: war, famine, disease and death, to which one might add taxes and spam. In light of “Space Aliens as Metaphor,” which category do the ones in this story seem to fit?

Responses welcome!