[Graham]

Originally Posted by gmw

Note: There is an element of unfairness in some of these comments. When I write a contemporary story I tend to assume my readers will be in a culture recognisably similar to my own - and this lets me get away with a lot. My own story opens in a bar that I do very little to describe, I expect my readers to fill in many of the details. It's a cheat, but one that works when the readers already carry a reasonably common and predictable set of images about what a "bar" is. It wouldn't work at all if the story was handed to some other cultures. Your story doesn't have that advantage if you want your story to work for an audience like myself.

On the other hand, that very element of unfairness is what gives this story the potential to be one of the most fascinating in the anthology for a Western audience. I'm really looking forward to seeing the setting brought out more and reading it again.

Spoiler:

I like gmw's suggestion that it could be understood from the outset that this was an unsettling dream, particularly if the protagonist is trying to explore why he's having the dream - what does it resolve?

If nothing else, that's a good fallback position if an alternate ending doesn't suggest itself.

Graham