Challenge 194

Larger Stories

Brad Andrews’ “Traffic Accident at 70 AU’s” has a lot of the high-tech atmosphere that makes for a convincing “hard” science-fiction story. Is “Traffic Accident” a vignette or a story? If a vignette, what might you add to it to make it a story?
Clyde Andrews’ “The Orion Incident” raises some questions:
1. Reg Conway tells Judy he can cease being a self-centered “pig” and that they can start over again as a couple. He abandons Judy to the space alien but returns — not out of concern for her but because he realizes that the spaceship is out of control and is heading away from Earth.
  
  Is there anything in Reg Conway’s character that justifies a change of heart toward Judy? Since the ship — and his own fate — are his motivation, has he really undergone a conversion? How can he expect Judy to trust him? Can he trust himself? Can the reader trust him?
2. “In a comedy, you get married; in a tragedy, you die.” Offhand I can think of only one “tragi-comedy,” Pierre Corneille’s Le Cid. It contains some masterpieces of dramatic poetry and is probably his best play, but Corneille got a lot of flak from the French Academy for mixing genres.
  
  The play’s reputation has deservedly outlasted the Academy’s opinion. However, the Academy was saying the right thing for the wrong reasons. A tragi-comedy is neither fish nor fowl: the tragedy and comedy (in the sense of a happy ending) dilute one another.
  
  The space alien experiences a full-fledged tragedy due to Reg Conway’s hubris. Reg and Judy get married. The tragedy and comedy overlap, but do they reinforce or conflict with each other? Is the mixture of genres justified?
E. S. Strout’s “Private Eye” has an interesting hard science-fiction premise: an enhanced human eye would serve very well for reconnoitering on Mars. However, aside from the comic by-play with the technicians’ eating habits, the story is a joke: “When an eye meets an eye coming ’cross the planet...”

Can you think of an ending to the story that would not involve irony and yet require the presence of the enhanced human eye in the exploration of Mars?
S. Michael Leier’s “A Haunted Past” tells a story within a story: the deliberations of the tribal council are in effect a morality play that teaches a lesson in justice and compassion.

As a rule, an enclosed story has a direct bearing on the “frame” within which it is set; otherwise the frame is irrelevant. Officer Dellette may or may not be a descendant of the coureur des bois of centuries before; no one can be sure, and the connection is tenuous at best. In a kind of time warp, Dellette’s wife is kidnapped in an act of retribution.
1. Does the Indians’ council implicitly condone hostage-taking and revenge against innocent people?
2. Are officer Dellette and his wife acquitted because the plaintiff technically has no case? How would the council have ruled if the warrior had been married to the slain woman?
3. Does the story of the distraught warrior directly affect the lives of Dellette or Brogan or Rick Vargo himself other than to return them to the status quo ante?

Responses welcome!