Challenge 942

The Story Inside

1. In Christopher DeRosa’s The Soldier’s Tale: What thematic similarities and differences can be found in The Mage’s Tale and The Soldier’s Tale?

2. In Jeffrey Greene’s In This House of Music:

   1. What is a “freebooter,” exactly? Is Pvt. Monaghan in any way an irregular soldier?
   2. Does Monaghan appear to have done anything to deserve the Varner sisters’ taunting apparition?
   3. What is the significance of the unnatural fog and Monaghan’s obsessive fear of being court-martialed for desertion? Does the story hint but not say that Monaghan has secretly deserted his post and committed war crimes? Or is the moral of the story strict “die by the sword” pacifism? Is some other interpretation possible?

3. In Johanna Haas’s Why We Called the Dog “Stumpy”:

   1. What natural predator might have crippled the dog before being scared off?
   2. What seems to be the societal role of local “monsters”?

4. In J. Clayton Stoker’s Tarzan Syndrome Breakout:

   1. Both Charlie and the Professor commit murder. Which is the psychopath and which is the sociopath?
   2. To whom does the Professor’s “Tarzan” theory apply?
   3. Both “Tarzan Syndrome Breakout” and “Nadir of the Labyrinth” contain embedded stories that are structured differently in each context. Could “Tarzan Syndrome Breakout” use a structure similar to that of “Nadir of the Labyrinth”? What other changes would ensue?
   4. The story makes several references to the film The Shawshank Redemption. How do the story’s main characters differ from those of the film? The story and the film differ radically in premise. What does each seem to say about prisoners?

5. In Liam Power’s Xenos: How many contradictions does the poem make? What might their function be?

6. In Meagan Denese Mealor’s Three Strikes in London:

   1. What are the “strikes” mentioned in the title?
   2. Who or what is “Leather Apron”?

7. In Gary Inbinder’s satirical review of Ducks, Newburyport, a parody imitates the novel’s use of “the fact that” as superfluous verbal punctuation:

   1. Is it technically feasible for prospective readers of a digital version of the novel to mass-delete all occurrences of “the fact that” and thereby begin to make the novel readable?
   2. What unconscious verbal tics does Bewildering Stories caution against that authors can check for with a manual find-replace scan of their manuscripts?

Responses welcome!

Copyright © March 14, 2022 by Bewildering Stories
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