Challenge 808

Dance Around the Donut

1. In L. S. Popovich’s The Net, does Riku really communicate with the monsters or does she merely broadcast noise? What might explain the delmora’s response to her “screech”?

2. In Harris Coverley’s Don’t Praise the Machine, what might happen if the customer thanked the supervisor or at least pleasantly acknowledged her existence?

3. In Jerome Malenfant’s The Sirens:

   1. What is the function of the parallel stanzas?
   2. Does Homer’s Odysseus yearn for the Sirens’ call, or is the conclusion poetic license?

4. In Catherine J. Link’s Nothing To Be Afraid Of:

   1. In part 3, what is the significance of the empty pill box in Carly’s pocket? Does she give Lorna a nitroglycerin pill or does she only pretend to?
   2. Which of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse do the space aliens embody: War, Disease, Famine and Pollution, or Death? Or do they bring them all by turns?

5. In Alan Garfoot’s A Creed of Peace, who or what is the narrator?

6. In Will Bernardara, Jr.’s Spook on Rye: a Meta Ghost Story:

   1. “You don’t need to believe in a donut to munch one down.” One can eat a donut without knowing what it is, but can one do so without believing it exists?
   2. “The Bible says our throats are open graves.” Where does it say that and, if it does, in what context?

7. In Channie Greenberg’s Owmapow Rides Again:

   1. Owen Brownstone refers to himself at one point as “Dr. Owen Brownstone.” Is he a health care professional? What would his title be in North America? In other parts of the world?
   2. How does Samantha Halibut insult “Owmapow”?
   3. If paragraphs were “enjambed,” properly speaking, how would they be corrected at Bewildering Stories?
   4. At what point does Samantha Halibut require Brownstone to duplicate her own work?
   5. Does the “Harsh Earth Press” operate like Bewildering Stories or does it do the opposite?

8. In Ed Blundell’s Rites of Spring:

   1. The word “Easter” derives from Proto-Indo-European by way of Proto-Germanic. It has acquired various names and other associations over the millennia but has never lost its original meaning. What is it?
   2. To what extent is the poem syncretic, i.e. does it conflate customs from different times and places?
   3. What is “Easter month” in the Anglo-Saxon tradition?
   4. The Maypole dancers sing, “Something’s going to happen, / What we do not know.” Might they know what is going to happen but not to whom?
   5. Is there any evidence that the prehistoric seasonal ritual involved female rather than male sacrifice?

Responses welcome!

Copyright © May 13, 2019 by Bewildering Stories
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