Challenge 870

Count Your Change

In Bill Kowaleski’s The Tide Turns, Maria Schoenbrun says that the overwhelming preponderance of mass media has told her that any and all space aliens are out to invade Earth. Can you cite a counter-example, where the opposite is true?
In Ken Poyner’s My New Thingfriend, how might Maria Schoenbrun, in Creative Destruction react to the poem? With enthusiastic approval? Running and screaming?
In Charles C. Cole’s Ice Dream, what classic science fiction story suggests that Deetz and Hayden might have been lucky to fall asleep and let their fire dissolve the frozen space alien?
In Théodore de Banville’s Fire Stealer:
1. Tourrier talks about “individualism.” Did the term mean the same thing in the France of 1882 as it did in, say, France or the USA of 1982 or later?
2. What technological advances does the story foresee? Have any proved to be accurate?
3. The story anticipates electrical lighting or something similar. Why has no one thought to invent the light switch? What substitutes for it?
In J. H. Zech’s Eden’s End: The Empty Cell, “Thanatos” is a Greek word used as a proper name. What does it mean? Is there a Japanese name in the story that more or less resembles it?
In Channie Greenberg’s Owmapow’s Side Job, how might the story illustrate an aphorism from an old song: “Nobody’s right if everybody’s wrong”?
In Meg Smith’s The Skull of Columbus, what is the poem’s connection with Christopher Columbus? With Hammond Castle?