Challenge 1030

Unlike Alike

In Gary Inbinder’s Lights Out: Max Niemand is knocked unconscious while snooping. The action parallels that of Chapter 14 of the author’s Phantom Point, “The Lawyer’s Files.” Judging by the following chapters in Phantom Point, can you hazard a prediction about Max Niemand’s current case?
In Steven Schechter’s He Left Nothing Behind: Why does the last news account, in Police Illustrated, seem to be the most accurate?
In L. B. Zinger’s Driven by Autopilot:
1. One might say that Irving is merely an avid tinkerer, but the story is a tragedy. What is Irving’s tragic flaw? How might he have foiled his nemesis and avoided his fate?
2. In what way does Kitty both respect and violate Isaac Asimov’s Three Laws of Robotics? Is self-preservation Kitty’s only law?
In Charles C. Cole’s The Civilized Wildes:
1. How many and what kind of potentially discordant individual and group differences does the story evoke?
2. What is the implicit moral of the story? How is it emphasized by the nature of the narrator’s next-door neighbors?
In Michael Barley’s Fair City, I Have Left You...: What is the tone of the poem? Lyrical? Realistic? Sarcastic?