"Soldier's Home," a novelette by William Barton, continues the dreary streak with a nostalgia-driven future in which super soldiers are all that remains of humanity. In the tale, Barton's humanity has been augmented by one group of aliens to help in a war against another group. Humanity gladly accepts its new powers, fights the good fight, and is nearly destroyed in the process. One of the survivors travels to an abandoned human colony in search of his vividly remembered, but ancient, history. He finds discarded intelligent toys which are lost without their masters.

Barton's story is reminiscent of the Joe Haldeman's The Forever War, and the writing style is enjoyable. Unfortunately, the story doesn't seem to go anywhere: the main character arrives, explores, remembers, fights a brief fight, and leaves.

The novella, "Son Observe the Time," by Kage Baker takes her readers -- and her time travellers -- back to turn of the century San Francisco on the days before the city's destruction by earthquake. Time travel is just a tool in this story; the real meat of it revolves around the nature of men... and the ability of higher powers to manipulate that nature.

Sea serpents and other oddities populate Robert Reed's "Human Bay." The story is based on the age old idea of a hero who is given a warning and promptly ignores it, with disastrous consequences. "In Old Glory," civilization collapses after exposure to a virus. The survivors rally around a recorder-of-deeds and the American flag as they try to re-kindle civilization. The ending of "Human Bay" has a nice fantasy-meets-Twilight-Zone feel and "Old Glory" is enjoyable in an end-of-the-world sort of a way.

On the non-fiction front, there's the monthly editorial, several book reviews, and an excellent piece on websites dedicated to writing speculative fiction.

The May edition is up to Asimov's usual high standards, although readers should be prepared for its interesting, but melancholy, fiction.