A novelet and seven short stories are found in this issue along with several columns. This issue fell into the better than average range. Notable, I think, is that two stories in this issue, marked below, made it into the 23 stories appearing in Gardner Dozois's 12th Annual collection of best stories from 1994. The cover story "The Remoras" also made it into Hartwell's "Space Opera Renaissance" collection in 2006. The fiction stories are:

"Sealight" shortstory by Ian R. MacLeod
"Birdie" shortstory by Mike Resnick and Nicholas A. DiChario
"Ash Minette" shortstory by Felicity Savage
"The Lady's Garden" shortstory by Jane Yolen
"California Dreamer" shortstory by Mary Rosenblum (selected for Dozois's Best of the Year Collection)
"Designated Hater" shortstory by Leslie What
"Conquistador" shortstory by Dale Bailey
"The Remoras" novelette by Robert Reed (selected for Dozois's Best of the Year Collection)

MacLeod's "Sealight" was a fun little piece of classic fantasy. At first I thought he was doing a slightly tongue in cheek sendup, but instead it was just a nice story with a bit of humor.

"Birdie", by Resnick and DiChario, was a completely fun riff on Charles Darwin and his search for the origin of a particular species. Very imaginative and I liked it a lot.

I really didn't care for "Brixtow White Lady" by Felicity Savage in the March 1994 issue, her first published story, so I approached "Ash Minette" with mild trepidation. It was a play on the Cinderella story. It turned out to be not bad, mildly entertaining, but not terribly interesting to me.

Jane Yolen's short unicorn story I thought quite blah. Not my style of fantasy. I didn't find Mary Rosenblum's "California Dreamer" all that remarkable either, and would not have pegged it for Dozois's Best of the Year Collection. I thought it a slightly confusing story of two women and a girl attempting to deal with loss and the new reality following the "Really Big One" quake in California. "Designated Hater" by Leslie What was a very short, slightly cute piece about revenge for the little and big things in life. Bailey's "Conquistador" was a very sad story.

"The Remoras" by Robert Reed was one of the highlights in the issue. Reed is a very competent and prolific writer. I've probably read several dozen of his stories over the years in various magazines and anthologies. This one is an excellent hard-SF tale set in the far far future where humans are essentially immortal, but some have adapted and mutated themselves to care for the outer hulls of spaceships on galactic voyages. They call themselves remoras, although they are still human. ( )