Challenge 937

The Fast One

In David Samuels’ Red He Wept:
1. What is the war about, and who are the adversaries? How much does it really matter from the viewpoints of Moralt and Arabelle?
2. In what way is Arabelle’s physical description strikingly different from that of the male characters? Is it comical or pejorative? In either case, why?
3. Can Arabelle’s logic — or anyone’s — dissuade believers from their emotional attachment to wishful thinking, magic and tribalism in any age?
4. How could the characters’ speech be rendered without using either today’s jargon or inventing a pseudo-medieval dialect? Can you cite current authors who write historical romance dialogue successfully?
  Trick question: What stage of the English language would be contemporary to the Epic of Gilgamesh?
In Laramie W. S. Graber’s A Human Parasite:
1. Do Rocan’s poor results on the “sanity test” affect his being press-ganged into joining the All-One?
2. Why is Ziggy not recruited into the cult?
3. Rocan finally says that the universe was never alive. So what? Does he follow the inference to a logical conclusion?
4. If the story is read as an allegory, what might the All-One represent in our world?
In C. J. Heckman’s Oura and Her Arbalest:
1. What details in the leper’s story might seem intended to indicate that it is as fictional as Aurek’s story of Ouros?
2. What moral points does the Oura story score against those of Ouros?
In E. P. Lande’s The Designer: Why does multitalented Steve abandon Todd’s art form for that of an architect? Couldn’t he work weekdays as an architect and weekends in strip clubs?
In Charles C. Cole’s After Working With Lucy:
1. What is the dramatic function of the characters’ changes in location?
2. What is the narrative advantage in avoiding physical descriptions of the characters? How do the readers benefit from the discursive strategy?
3. What future do you foresee for Cliff and Lucy?

Responses welcome!