Challenge 769

Happiness? What’s That?

In P. C. Keeler’s Time After Time, the story is a joke about time-travel paradoxes. How else is the story humorous?
In Mike Acker’s Celestial Metaphors: When poetic images have become clichés, how can a poet revive them afresh? Is it necessary to wait till they’re forgotten?
In Arthur Whitaker’s Happiness for Sale:
1. What does the opening tell the reader about Beatrice Underwood?
2. Why should Miss Underwood be officially unhappy? What advantages should make Nova officially happy?
3. What constitutes happiness?
In Liana V. Andreasen’s At Taft Point:
1. What modes of happiness do the group memebers enact or represent?
2. At what point can the reader begin to form doubts or suspicions about the group’s purpose?
3. How does Mister Rex persuade the group to sacrifice itself? Why do his followers think they’re doing a good thing? Or do they?
4. Does the sacrifice implicitly deny good and endorse evil committed in the past? If not, what else does it do?