"The One Who Conquers" by Bruce Holland Rogers
"Still Man" by William R. Eakin
"Rattler" by Gene Wolfe and Brian Hopkins
"Tiny Flowers & Rotten Lace" by Jay Lake
"The Flowers of Tekheli" by Liz Williams
"Power Sources" by Julia H. West
"Hearts' Desires" by Nina Kiriki Hoffman

Fiction in this issue opens with "The One Who Conquers" by Bruce Holland Rogers. It's a cautionary fable about violence and worship. Trolls, driven by the god of the title, leave their dank caves for the sunshine and easy living of the surface world. But what then? It wouldn't be a fable if the ending didn't neatly (and predictably) restate the beginning, and "The One Who Conquers" doesn't disappoint in this regard. As far as fables go it's competently done, but it left me unimpressed. I prefer stories that evoke a sense of magic in the quotidian.

"Still Man" by William R. Eakin, set in Eakin's town of Redgunk, Mississippi, does just that. I would love this story, if it weren't for a lingering sense that at times the characters moved at the convenience of the writer, and not driven by their own internal logic. Johann Kurtz, also known as Still Man, is the supplier of 99 percent of the liquor sold in Blake County. He's also a builder of artificially intelligent robots, a homicidal loner, and a doting father. When a suicidally naive social worker comes to take his daughter away from him, she discovers the secret of Still Man's moonshine and the call of the wild. It's a lush and inventive story that makes you afraid of, and long for, the light of the moon.

In "Rattler" by Gene Wolfe and Brian Hopkins, the pickup truck of the title does its own driving. "Rattler" is a delightful story in the best tradition of American tall tales. Overheard in a diner, an old man tells his dining companion of a vehicle that learned to hunt raccoons from a dead dog. Wolfe and Hopkins put themselves in the story in a frame that would have been better edited out, but this minor flaw detracts only a little from its good fun.

"Tiny Flowers & Rotten Lace" by Jay Lake, and "The Flowers of Tekheli" by Liz Williams follow a similar template. Both are stories of ghosts in search of release. In both the haunted main characters promise to help the ghosts in exchange for their own kind of salvation.

Timmy, a little boy in contemporary Oregon, is stalked by his family's dead and buried secrets in "Tiny Flowers." Revealing the secrets frees Timmy from the tyranny of an abusive father and the ministrations of the neighborhood bullies. In an otherwise dark, complicated and moody piece, the ending was too simple, the accounts balanced too easily.

"The Flowers of Tekheli," set in post-Soviet Kazakhstan, is told from the perspective of Fairuza, a young college student who must resuscitate a long dead cultural heroine to secure the return of her missing brother. It's a somewhat threadbare plot, but Williams' acute sense of setting and character make the story.

"Power Sources" by Julia H. West is an ambitious melding of science fiction and fantasy. Often stories in this sub-sub-genre attempt to explain the one as the other, but West allows both magic and science to coexist. Unfortunately the result is a story that lacks the sense of mystery and magic that characterizes good fantasy, and the intellectual wonder that's the heart of good science fiction.

Nina Kiriki Hoffman contributes almost a sketch of a story that feels like it wants more substance in "Hearts' Desires." A young girl on Halloween visits a house whose inhabitant is a witch in more than just costume. Presented with the opportunity to obtain her heart's desire, what does she do? The answer, while consistent with the character's portrayal, is a little unsatisfying. Nonetheless, Hoffman's talent for description and characterization make this story a must read.

The fiction section is supplemented with a somewhat breathless celebration of the release of Lord Of The Rings: Return Of The King that's sure to please the media junkies. I was also intrigued by Ari Beck's survey of Finnish folk poems. Overall an issue well worth reading, for the two stories of Americana, if nothing else.

Jeremy Lyon is a freelance writer, tech industry cube farmer and the publisher of Futurismic, a site for people interested in the future and the effects of science and technology on the present.