On "History for a Wedge" by Paul Martone (3259 words) ***

You can only ignore the future for so long. That, I take it, is one of the themes of this story. This story's greatest strength to me, however, is the way it pulls us through a rather mundane afternoon before pounding us with a highly disruptive conclusion. Sure, the end is set up, but we don't think too much about it until it arrives. Instead, we're focused on, um, trivia, which is precisely the point--precisely what our narrator is trying to focus on. Read all about it, and learn a few Trivial Pursuit answers, here at Stickman Review.

On "Retroactive Special" by Michael Cocchiarale (3511 words) ***

This is a competently written story that pulls you in and along by sheer good writing. The situations seem standard, and the characters, while not terribly unique, don't seem stock--they're everymen that somehow manage to seem real. Like many stories, the plot of this one is circular, ending in a place much like that start, only with changed understanding and circumstances. Read the story here.