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About The Best of Fantasy and Science Fiction Magazine, January-February 2003

Here are six stories from the January and February 2003 issues of The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction , at once more current and more human than today's headlines. M. Shayne Bell's "Anomalous Structures of My Dreams" is set in his hometown of Salt Lake City. The narrator, stuck in a hospital bed, discovers that there is danger of infection from his roommate, and a far greater danger as well - to the fabric of life itself. In "Vandoise and the Bone Monster," Alex Irvine employs a unique narrative device to explore the ways in which stories survive over time, to show his concern for the land Out West, and to tell a bone-chilling tale. Set on the Gulf on Mexico, Albert E. Cowdrey's "Grey Star" unleashes a hurricane of horror. "Old Virginia" by Laird Barron takes place during a domestic CIA operation gone bad, and suggests a new hypothesis about the lost Roanoke Colony of 1588, and, indeed, a new theory of evil. Ursula K. Le Guin's cautionary tale of sociological ecology, "The Seasons of the Ansarac," is from her forthcoming collection, Changing Planes , and deals with a complex and beautiful alien culture. And finally, Sheila Finch's new story, "Reach," focuses on a brilliant dancer, and on how difficult it can be to stand out in one's chosen field.