This issue contains 6 stories; a novella, a novelete and 4 short stories. There are also several columns, opinion pieces and film and book reviews. I thought there was one outstanding story in the issue and didn't find any awful clunkers among the other stories. A good issue. Reviews, particularly of short stories sometimes give away too much of the story and I want to avoid that from now on. So my comments here will be more general on details for the most part.

The first story, "The Boarder" by Alexander Jablokov is introduced as neither science fiction or fantasy, but historical fiction. It is nominally about a Russian immigrant family and the boarders that they have. The "boarder" of the title is a Russian defector who worked on the sputnik program. The story reads like a coming of age memoir of the young boy who tells the rather glum story. It really was only of slight interest to me, although the story is well told.

This was followed by "Rumple What?" by Nancy Springer, a respinning of the Rumpelstiltskin fairytale. It was OK.

The novella "The Overseer by Albert E. Cowdrey" is the story I thought was the highlight of this issue. The story is another historical fiction, a dark fantasy with a ghost. A haunted elderly crippled man is writing a confessional memoir recounting ugly events and his own evil nature from the time from before the Civil War to the beginning of the 20th century. It is a dark atmospheric tale and I thought it was very well written. The story moves back and forth from the old man's life in 1903 New Orleans to reading his written memoirs of the time from the Civil War through Reconstruction. Just an outstanding story.

The short story "Exit Strategy" by K D Wentworth was a bit of a kick. In the future you can legally commit suicide and donate your body to The Church of Second Life, who will implant a stored personality from someone else. Slightly funny it was also a subtle look at suicide counseling. Better than I expected it to be.

The other short stories in the issue were "The Second Descent" by Richard Paul Russo and "A Ten Pound Sack of Rice" by Richard Mueller. "The Second Descent" was probably the most interesting of these - where a group of mountain climbers have lost three members on an Everest like climb and seem to be caught in a type of purgatory or limbo outside of time. Rather eerie and unsettling and quite good. "A Ten Pound Sack of Rice" was also entertaining. ( )