Challenge 256

A Way In and a Way Out

In Bob Brill’s “Adventures of a Botanist,” which do you think is the most interesting character?

At the end, Sydney says, “Trouble is we think like humans. What is it like to think like plants? That’s what we need to do. Think like them and figure out what’s happening.” In view of the plants’ political machinations and factionalism, do they really think all that differently from human beings?
One definition of an anecdote is a story that ends where it began. Bill West’s “Sam Haine” depicts a bereaved widower and father who hallucinates about decomposition. Can you write a beginning or an ending that will take the story beyond its starting point?

“Alice’s body does not move but the head rotates until, impossibly, it faces him. Something is wrong.” — What is the effect: horror or unintended humor?
In Bryan D. Catherman’s “Six Feet Over Carlos Cleats,” why might we think that Julie will get caught?
In “Finding Beauty,” does Branigan Grace successfully avoid lapsing into sentimentality? If not, what would you have written differently?

In what way is the allusion to Narnia more than a thank-you note to C. S. Lewis for the boy’s means of escape?
Can you suggest an ending to Richard K. Lyon’s “The Menace of the Pink Lagoons” that would make the AI’s plans more plausible?
Can you suggest an ending — even a longer one — to Richard H. Fay’s “West Dingleton’s Loss of Humanity” that would make the same point?
What would Michael Lee Johnson’s “A Poem of the Night” gain or lose if it were written as straight prose, without line breaks?

Responses welcome!