Challenge 329

Push That Banana

In Marjorie Salzwedel’s “Captain Webster”:
1. Is “Earthspeak” a single language or a family of languages?
2. What does the mission to spy on students have to do with the end of the story?
3. Does Captain Webster’s developer think his robot is trustworthy enough to pilot a spaceship?

In Peter Cawdron’s “Countdown”:
1. Machines to view the past or future are as age-old a staple of science fiction as fortune tellers’ crystal balls. How could the technical explanation of the “time cycle” viewer be kept to a minimum and yet provide a veneer of respectability?
2. The story is complete on line as of issue 329. How do the premise and ending of the story validate Bewildering Stories’ unofficial motto “Any story based on current events is out of date before it’s written”?

In Myke Greenlese’s “Cross Archipelago”:
1. Why has Chumboy deliberately decided to remain silent for so long?
2. Does the shape of the atoll have religious significance or does it symbolize Chumboy’s double-crossing Capt. Shrub?
3. Does the choice of the name ‘Shrub’ indicate that the story may be a political allegory? In what ways might the story be one? Why might a reader conclude that it isn’t?
4. At the end, does Chumboy show a curious lack of ambition? Or is he liable to encounter a fate similar to Capt. Shrub’s?

In John W. Steele’s “The Curse of the Hirudineans”:
1. How does the author use linguistic, visual, and dramatic elements of comedy?
2. What line in the story explains the title of this Challenge?
3. The ending is ambiguous. What two choices does Milton have when he goes to the garage? Which is more likely? If Hell is life with either Edna or Alice, is the story a comic variation on Jean-Paul Sartre’s No Exit?

Ásgrímur Hartmannsson invites readers to supply alternate endings to his “Robot Emissary.”

In Alan Delaney’s “Stricken”:
1. Does the narrator’s infatuation with Ishtar destroy his life or give it focus?
2. At the end, why does the narrator wait for Ishtar’s return? How long has he been waiting? How long is he likely to wait?
3. In what way is the narrator a mirror image of Milton, in John W. Steele’s “The Curse of the Hirudineans”?
Book 4, episode 8 in Richard K. Lyon’s The Long Dark Road to Wizardry represents a turning point for both Druin and Breen. By what stages have they come to what is both a joining and parting of ways?