Challenge 546

Send What?

1. In Arthur Mackeown’s “The Prophecy”:

   1. At what point does the silent man’s silence result in inadvertent humor?
   2. How would an actor in a stage play deliver the last line of the story?

2. In Amy Locke’s “Sleeping With the Buffalo”:

   1. Is the story really a poem? Would removing the line breaks make any noticeable change in the narrative?
   2. As prose, how would the story be classified: as flash fiction or a memoir?

3. In Ross Smeltzer’s “In Times of Plenty”:

   1. Is the story a fable, a modern fantasy, or a fairy tale?
   2. Might the story be “keyed” or allegorical in some way? If so, what might it refer to?

4. In LaVerne Zocco’s “Make It So”:

   1. A fictionalized Amelia Earhart communicates a kind of final memoir without being able to write it. Is the narrative device unknown in literature?
   2. Does the story overstep Bewildering Stories’ “dead narrator” guideline, which holds that someone must live to tell the tale?
   3. What does the narrator know that the real Amelia Earhart could not possibly know?
   4. How likely is it that the real Amelia Earhart would not know Morse Code?
   5. Is there any inconsistency in the account of the damage done to the radio equipment?

Responses welcome!

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