The issue contained a number of book reviews and several columns including a rant on films by Harlan Ellison. There is also a long science article on bacteria by Bruce Sterling. Six works of fiction made it into the issue and they were:

Kevin17 • shortstory by William Shunn
The Beautiful, The Damned • shortfiction by Kristine Kathryn Rusch
Working Stiff • shortstory by Mike Resnick and Nicholas A. DiChario
Three Gifts • novelette by Dean Whitlock
Tirkiluk • novelette by Ian R. MacLeod
Dark Star • novelette by Jack Williamson

Kevin17 was an interesting look at a young boy who is a clone and his first days of school. He misses his sibling clones. Going to school is part of a darker experiment. KKR's "The Beautiful, The Damned" is a well done homage to F Scott Fitzgerald. Unfortunately the beautiful and the damned are vampires (I think). ugh. amazingly I still enjoyed it. "Working Stiff" is an entertaining piece about an old movie star. I think Dean Whitlock's "Three Gifts" was my favorite of the issue. A woman with a gift for healing and foresight escapes from an unhappy life and returns to her childhood home. She wants to be alone but a friendship comes with a monk, Brother Simon, who makes his prayers on her beach. Ian R. MacLeod's "Tirkiluk" is a survival and horror story of sorts set in the North during WW2. Quite different. It is told by entries in the log of a man assigned to an arctic weather station.

Golden Age writer Jack Williamson closed out the issue with "Dark Star." This was my least favorite in the issue. I liked the story itself but there were several rather ridiculous character elements that "ruined" it. Almost a dud. It is related to Williamson's later novel "The Black Sun."

As these things go this was a pretty good issue. Good reading with no clunkers among the stories! ( )