Karl Schroeder's Queen of Candesce is reasonably good, but I can't help but wish all the characters would die horribly. I didn't care much for the rest of the stories, although they were all serviceable. On the whole this is a decent but instantly forgettable issue.

• Serial (2 of 4): Queen of Candesce, by Karl Schroeder - Sequel to previously serialized Sun of Suns. Venera Fanning is castaway on Spyre, an immense relict city fully a dozen miles in diameter. With help from exiled Garth Diamandis, Venera works to find a way to escape Spyre so she can exact revenge on all her enemies.
• Novella: Small Pond, by C. Sanford Lowe & G. David Nordley - Liz Avonford risks all to ensure that her sister's Black Hole Project continues as planned.
• Novelette: Cool Neighbor, by Michael Shara & Jack McDevitt - Astronomer Kristi Lang studies brown dwarfs--which she posits are artificially created warning beacons--and discovers that one of these brown dwarfs appears to be wobbling with a six-month cycle.
• Short story: Trucks, by Amy Bechtel - Young Ryan cannot see numbers like normal people, but he effortlessly interprets facial expressions.
• Short story: Misquoting the Moon, by David Bartell - When an asteroid is about to destroy Earth, one man hunts the last of the elephants--then offers his guide a chance to escape with him to one of the lunar colonies.
• Science fact: Toward a Not-Just-Diamond Age, by Stephen L. Gillet, Ph.D. - Nanotechnology will be largely carbon-based, but plenty of other elements can be constructed into useful substances.