"Anomalous Structures of My Dreams" by M.Shayne Bell
"Halfway House" by Jeremy Minton
"Vandoise and the Bone Monster" by Alex Irvine
"The Birds of Isla Mujeres" by Steven Popkes
"Train of Events" by James L. Cambias
"A Christmas Story" by John Varley
"The Machine" by M. Rickert
"Grey Star" by Albert E. Cowdrey

M. Shayne Bell's eye-opening novelet, "Anomalous Structures of My Dreams," kick starts this issue with the protagonist sharing a hospital room with an industrial scientist who has a very bad case of nanolung. Specifically, the nanomachines the scientist had been building for his telecom employer are busily building commercial-grade communications gear out of the raw materials of his lungs. Seems he inhaled the microscopic machines when they escaped from his lab's containment systems and now his every cough releases them into the world, where they will infect anything and anyone that contains the materials they need to mindlessly build, build, build, including our protagonist. An AIDS patient who has given up on the world and on humanity and cut himself adrift on a sea of self pity, he finds himself among friends and family again when everyone else finally shares his sense of impending doom. This is good, solid sf about real people, and full of heart.

"The Birds of Isla Mujeres," a short story by Steven Popkes, takes us to a Mexican resort island where a woman fleeing her rocky marriage gets lost in the ministrations of an android or zombie who embodies her ideal specimen of a man. "Alfredo," sold to her by a kind of pimp, waits on her every whim, satisfying her every sexual desire, even taking a job to support her so that she need never leave him or La Isla Mujeres. But, like the frigate birds who endlessly circle the island, our wandering protagonist cannot long be satisfied where she is, and when Alfredo's love for her becomes too confining, she again takes flight, returning home to her husband, her place in Alfredo's bed given up to another restless woman. I wasn't sure what to make of this story. The protagonist's motives were murky to me, too much at a distance for me to see clearly. And Alfredo's sudden burst of clarity, an awakening in which he clearly sees who he is and why he loves the protagonist, was too brief to let me in on the secret.

James L. Cambias's short story "Train of Events" is another tale of pathogens escaped from a lab. This time the events surrounding the accident and their aftermath are predetermined by time travel technology that has pervaded this near-future society. Our hero, or antihero, is the hapless lab worker who, it is known in advance, will accidentally release a deadly virus that will kill more than 600 people. Still, he goes to work as usual on the fateful day because he knows there is no escape from his destiny. Protestors meet him at his workplace and are held back by police enforcing laws against temporal discrimination. This is a tight little tale that answers the question, "Can a story be suspenseful if the ending is predetermined?" with a resounding yes. Cambias does a masterful job of showing how time travel might affect such mundane matters as culture and the economy, sprinkling his story with eye-popping examples of "futuretech" manufactured by companies up the time stream from the story's focus, and such social gems as thrill seeking "grandfuckers" cruising the past for playmates.

John Varley's short short "A Christmas Story" is a Feghoot, a type of story that has, for my generation, taken on the mystique of urban legend. As in, "If you try to write a story under 500 words, you will crash and burn and be forever ridiculed by your elders." Apparently, the legend goes, there was only one successful author of these "Feghoots," and he's long gone, so no one had better attempt such audacity again. Varley actually sought and received permission from the estate of the original Feghoot author to use his original Feghoot character in this short short, so I guess he's off the hook. Anyway, his one-pager is really nothing more than a groan-producing, Christmas-themed joke involving a flattened moose and a rabbi on a pogo stick.

The next short story is a fable called "The Machine" by M. Rickert to explain why the nightingale sings at night. She's Philomela, a young girl who was raped by a mercenary who married her older sister just so he could get to her. When Procne, the older sister, finds out about her husband's evil deed, she helps her sister exact revenge. The fable is framed by some editorializing about the current state of our Web and TV addicted society and the relevance such fables should have for us. I was so taken in by this simple but effective story that the editorializing didn't bother me. I'm not sure why it's called "The Machine," though.

Next up is "Grey Star," a short story by Albert E. Cowdrey. It's difficult to speak of this surprising and powerful piece without spoiling it. Suffice it to say, Cowdrey succeeds in blending two different times on the Gulf Coast, connected by the thunder and fury of two hurricanes, the first of which signaled the end of an era before motels and glitzy casinos dominated the area. Just how and why the past and the present intersect is revealed only at the climax of the two hurricanes, when death and destruction reaches its fateful conclusion in the past, and is narrowly averted in the present.

"Halfway House," a novelet by Jeremy Minton, shows us the twilight of human civilization. An alien race has taken pity on our poor race, which has brought its own end upon itself by rendering Earth's environment uninhabitable. The aliens have set up the means for a few of us to survive. This is the Halfway House of the title, presided over by a hard-bitten woman over 100 years old, who doesn't look a day over 40. Her job is to pass judgment on the few who, one at a time, have been allowed to present application to the aliens to be transformed into creatures capable of surviving on an alien world. "Halfway House" reveals how love can bloom in the most unlikely of places, and what its powerful consequences can be. It's a good story with a satisfying finish; hopeful, in spite of its bleak outlook.

The issue concludes with the cover story, a novelet by Alex Irvine called "Vandoise and the Bone Monster." I found this to be the least effective of the bunch. I think it was a victim of its own wonderful cover art. The image, by Kent Bash, is of an old, weather-beaten white man framed against a backdrop of spectacular, rugged mountain scenery, with the face of a native American man riding high among the clouds. The face of the old man is so alive and full of unspoken personal history that probably involves the native American, that that's what I expected the story to be about. Instead, the story has the old man relaying a story that happened to someone else, who in turn relays another story, and so on back in time. The core story itself is an improbable tale of the supernatural Bone Monster of the title, who was conjured by a stock native American medicine man, a man who has only a walk-on part. I enjoyed the story-within-a-story device, but the monster's pursuit of an old West settler wasn't sufficiently grounded in character or history to feel real to me.

Overall, a well-rounded issue, featuring a nice blend of well-told fantasy and sf. There should be something here for just about anyone to like.