Challenge 270

Literary Dentistry

At the end of Claës Lundin’s “Nature Poetry and Starch,” the poet Apollonides disappears after Oxygen’s tirade in favor of hypermodernism. Has Oxygen won the argument? Given Miss Rosebud’s character, what do you think is going to happen?

How far have video games progressed toward realizing the headmaster’s dreams in “The New School”?
Is the ending of Robert H. Prestridge’s “Abandon” entirely convincing? Why or why not?
What more would you like to hear from the old explorer in Lloyd H. Frye’s “He Married a Yeti”?
What happens to the lawyer at the end of Luke Jackson’s “Ekpyrosis”? Is he rescued from his dissipation or does he just go on a “bad trip”?
What purpose does the dog serve in Mari Mitchell’s “Honey of the Gods”?
What more would you like to know about the man on the high horse in Gary Moshimer’s “Man on the High Horse”? What purpose does the offstage wife serve in the story?
What would you have O. J. Anderson’s Jack Creed do if you could send him and his squad to Rachel Parson’s New Fairy?
What would be lost if John Stocks’ “The Charcoal Burner” were retold as a story in prose?
One of our review editors points out that Kane X. Faucher’s “A Review with Teeth” would not have seemed entirely far-fetched in the early 19th century. What cultural change has taken place since that time to make the review’s style quite out of date?