Challenge 793

The Laundry on the List

In Charles C. Cole’s Murder in New Eden:
1. What previous attacks does Delumbria appear to have made against the “topsiders”? Why have they failed? How did the kidnapping of Lucy Nakamura succeed?
2. What threat does Delumbria make against Lucy? What response can the reader expect the topsiders to make?
3. What kind of revolution does Delumbria propose? Would he really change anything?
4. How does New Eden keep the population under control? How does Lucy inadvertently confirm the disadvantage of a “city in space”?
5. How might the reader expect the conflict to end in the concluding chapter?
In Janel Brubaker’s The Cavern of Serpents:
1. How would Sigmund Freud interpret the snakes in chapter 3? What does the word Schlange mean in German slang? Might Dr. Freud have derived a different symbology if he had spoken English? What is the feminist critique of Freud’s view? Is it borne out in chapter 3?
2. In chapter 4, what, exactly, causes Medusa’s or Python’s estrangement from Phoebe?
In L. S. Popovich’s Hey, You:
1. How would the animals react in a real slaughterhouse?
2. What is the symbolic function of the cigarette?
3. Why does Maximilian reject the nickname “Max”?
4. What is the difference between the catastrophe that befell Maximilian’s family and the one that the Pig families face?
5. In the end, who eats whom?
In Margaret Rumford’s At the Tillicoultrie Inn:
1. What might inspire Euan’s initial attraction to Dorrie? How might he have seen Dorrie on television without watching a daytime program?
2. Is Dorrie really a klutz? How does her style differ from that of the other chefs?
3. Why are the goats necessary to the plot?
4. Is the Spanish diner’s death necessary? How does the insertion of a tragic episode affect the comedy?
In Hannah Spencer’s The Lady Under the Lake:
1. How might readers foresee that Arthur will misinterpret his premonition of drowning?
2. Everyone who drowns in the lake is male. Why must the water nymph be female?
3. Disregard the evil spirit. What really accounts for the drownings?
In Reina Cruz’s Sombrerón:
1. Why does the sombrerón want Magdalena’s hair in the first place?
2. Will the ghostly figure return after Magdalena’s hair grows back?
3. Is the story actually a vignette? If it’s a story, what might the moral be?
In Robin Helweg-Larsen’s Warfare:
1. What kind of deity does the poem presume? An interventionist? A Prime Mover? A teacher? A clockmaker? An irrelevant spectator? Some other?
2. Does the poem list war profiteering as a common human activity?
3. How might the poem be read a parody? As a satire? Or is it simply moralistic?

Responses welcome!