One of the best -- if not _the_ best -- things about an e-zine is the amount of fiction an editor can present in a given issue. Sharples and Rasmussen don’t stint in this department.

“The Bluesman” by Butch Miller presents a Devil’s deal story in a very appealing package. Musician-by-night Walt Brown seems content with his life until he meets Willie Johnson at an asylum near Chicago where Walt goes to visit his uncle. From this stranger, Walt learns things about deals with the Devil that he never knew before. Miller draws his characters in very realistic fashion, especially Willie Johnson, giving just enough detail in just the right places so the reader can see the old bluesman with ease. And Miller’s takes on what “paying dues” means and where one can find a “crossroads” these days are refreshingly different.

There are stories where you recognize all the elements (the characters, the setting, the basic plot) because you’ve read them dozens of times elsewhere, but you keep reading in the hope that the writer will do something interesting with them. Arnold Christianson certainly tries with “Marico” but doesn’t succeed. His post-apocalyptic Earth features a dwindling number of humans defending themselves against Mechs and a slow invasion of “cytes” (which may be short for nanocytes, though it’s never spelled out in the story). The explanation of the title character’s first meeting with her machine/human lover made my suspension-of-disbelief balloon pop loudly. Using Tanana’s machine origins as explanation for his raping Marico doesn’t change the fact that t was rape, and despite the proliferation of TV movies and soap opera episodes to the contrary, few if any women later become their rapists’ lovers. It’s a shame, as this was an otherwise well-written story.

What starts out as a sensory feast very nearly tips over into purpledom in David Murphy’s “Oblivion Fade.” While Murphy leads the reader through Simon Thornton’s quirky life as a media executive, he lavishes poetic phrases and internal rhymes upon his story in a manner I found alternately seductive and frustrating. What saves this SF story, ultimately, is its energy and passion. The ending is, perhaps, too pat for such a story -- but it’s also inevitable, given what precedes it.

Electric Wine also publishes reprints. For this issue the editors chose “Haunted” by Scott Nicholson (reprinted from More Monsters From Memphis) and “The Rain King” by David Felts (reprinted from Millennium Science Fiction and Neverworlds).

Nicholson’s tale focuses on a family of three visited by what they believe are ghosts. The family has tried to keep themselves and their lives as bland as possible, fearing more colorful options will attract otherwordly attention. Nicholson weaves a subtle, very Southern Gothic tension through the story -- even the silences are loud. “Haunted” is a quiet, gentle frisson up the spine, a classic form of ghost story, and finely sculpted. The only thing that was bothersome was the dialogue layout -- not that it hasn’t been done before, just that it was disconcerting. Intentional? You decide.

“The Rain King” is another sort of ghost story, one that grabbed me right from the start and had me in a full nelson right to the end. A young girl sees a legendary figure, the Rain King, a powerful wizard who lost his wife and daughter in a river-crossing accident years ago and cast a spell of everlasting rain over the land in his grief. Miri wants to ask the Rain King if there’s really a sun, and on Mourning Day she does just that. Her father’s warnings of the Rain King’s dangerousness prove all too true, but Miri finds a way to help the Rain King and her family. David Felts found a bit of magic and wove it into a story that would be quite comfortable next to any classic fairy tale.

The search for magical powers takes a very different path in Steven Piziks’ “Bedlam.” Three people embark upon their final test for entrance into a school of sorcery, in a land where sorcerors use not only their own energy to ensorcel, but the energy of others willing to sell themselves for generous payments into a sorceror’s employ. The generous payments are necessary, because past a certain point, those who are used as energy sources slip into madness. Each sorceror must build and maintain a personal Bedlam, and this one is just as bad -- if not worse -- as those we know in our own world. The three characters are used to show three choices one might make when faced with such a test, especially when one of the sold ones proves to still be sane. Piziks has a very nice command of language and description, and the story moves very smoothly to a satisfying conclusion.

Poetry is also included in Electric Wine. “Dark Wings” and “Crimson Tears” by M. (Mike) W. Anderson appear to concern vampires, or Death in some incarnation. The structure provided by a rhyming scheme helps give these poems weight and the dark tone they require, given their subjects. Timons Esaias uses a very well-known rhyme to spark a decidedly disturbing diatribe from certain extraterrestrials in “Taunts from Beyond.” “Listen” and “Whisper” by Chad Hensley are encounters with death, the merest brushings with mortality that elicit just the right amount of shiver.

All told, this was a good issue of EW. Go check it out for yourself.