Challenge 787

Fined Dining

1. In Ronald Larsen’s Waiting for the 4:08:
   What might be the moral of the story: the virtue of a couple’s heroic loyalty or two lives wasted by a needless war?

2. In Marc Carver’s Trust, the narrator might trust in whom or what?

3. In Ken Poyner’s Crucial Distance:

   1. Why might the theocratic imperialists be named “Neibillers”?
   2. What other forms of resistance might be found than concealment?

4. In Bill Kowaleski’s Changing Places:

   1. What unspoken line in the story justifies borrowing the name of Franz Kafka’s character Gregor Samsa?
   2. What might happen to the population of Seattle if Mr. Schneier gets even bigger ideas?

5. In Ásgrímur Hartmannsson’s Be Fit or Be Fined:

   1. What seems to be the prescribed diet for the citizenry? Who or what prescribes it?
   2. To what territory are Magga and others transported, at the end? Who occupies it?
   3. What does the story satirize? Has cannibalism become more or less beneficial since Cyrano de Bergerac’s “You Are Whom You Eat”?

6. In Matthew Harrison’s Seen It Before:

   1. Why might Britain be depicted as being in economic distress?
   2. How does the Aspect project justify its continued existence?
   3. Is Siu-mei’s mother a genius or does she point out the obvious?
   4. Why might at least one journalist anticipate Siu-mei’s discovery, that her project is repeating an earlier one? Who else knows of the deception?
   5. Is the Aspect project a fraud? Does Siu-mei’s vision of the sky justify its continuance?

Responses welcome!

Copyright © November 26, 2018 by Bewildering Stories
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