The included fiction is:
• Old Paint • novelette by Megan Lindholm
• The Girl in the Park • shortstory by Robert Reed
• Fix • poem by Gord Sellar
• Kill Switch • shortstory by Benjamin Crowell
• Alive and Well, A Long Way From Anywhere • novelette by Allen M. Steele
• Zip • shortstory by Steven Utley
• Bird Walks in New England • shortstory by Michael Blumlein
• Terraformations • poem by Robert Frazier
• Long Night on Redrock • novella or novelette by Felicity Shoulders

This issue has the sort of stories that I enjoy in the magazine. First off, Robin Hobb using her Megan Lindholm pen name reminds me how much I enjoy the Lindholm stories. "Old Paint" is set in the middle of the 21st century I'd guess, and 'Old Paint' is a vintage car from the 2020's. A woman's great grandfather has died and left the car to her (and her pre-teen and teenage kids). Let's call this future nostalgia since the car is quite future modern by our standards. There is a multi-generation family story in here and under this wrapper a tale about the smart cars of the future and what might happen when the hackers hack the smartcars. Editors Gardener Dozois and David Hartwell both selected "Old Paint" for inclusion in their annual "Year's Best" anthologies.

Robert Reed's "The Girl in the Park" is another good one. The prolific Reed writes very good stories and I am rarely disappointed. This story is set in a rather ruined future.

By the third story I was wondering if this was something of a theme issue, where in the future, future tech has a downside, or unintended consequences. However, the remaining stories mixed it up.

Allen Steele (an author who rarely disappoints me) delivers an impressive glimpse of a future about 50-80 years from now regarding solar system exploration but at a very down to earth, human level. I really liked this one all the way to the end.

When finished, I decided that my two favorite stories were the novelettes by Megan Lindholm and Allen Steele as a very close 1/2 rank. I thought the weakest was the short story "Bird Walks in New England" by Michael Blumlein, primarily because it was very much out of place with the other stories. It is a relationship story with only a slight SFnal element. I think something like the old Ladies Home Journal with the "Can this marriage be saved" column might have been a good choice for "Bird Walks in New England". The cover story and longest story in the issue, "Long Night on Redrock" was close to novella length. Not really my cuppa but I can guess that some readers would enjoy it more than I did.

What impressed me was that there was not a bad story in the bunch. How Refreshing. ( )