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.