Brief posts: 5 stories, 1 free, none particularly good

Non-download links are to lists containing actual posts.

1. John Scalzi's "Missives from Possible Futures no 1: Alternate History Search Results" (B); download; Subterranean Online, Winter 2007: First half is a hard selling ad of a future paid search engine! Later half is a collection of several very tiny stories - ostensibly about how history would have been shaped had Hitler died in different ways; to me this felt like arbitrary alternate history scenarios. General mood is humorous, but I'm unfamiliar with some of the situations - those from West can probably enjoy it a little more.
2. Playboy, 2007 issues: Stephen King's "Mute" (B); Woody Allen's "This Nib For Hire" (B); Edward Falco's "Winter Storms" (B); Denis Johnson's "The Starlight on Idaho" (C): All are non-genre. Allen's story is humorous, & very slightly scifi - protagonist is a writer with one published story that involves traveling past in time. Other 3 are dark. Falco's is about US presence in Iraq; Johnson's describes a family of criminals; & King's is a story involving embezzlement, extra-marital relations, & murder.