Rachel Pollack

A collection of fourteen fantasy stories by well-known authors, set in the age of steam engines and featuring automatons, clockworks, calculating machines, and other marvels that never existed.

Summary:The Beatrix Gates is a colorful mix of science fiction, magic realism, memoir, and myth exploring themes of spirituality and transformation. Courage and cowardice contend in a literary odyssey unlike any other. Written especially for this volume, "Trans Central Station" is Pollack's personal and political take on the transgender experience then and now--and tomorrow? "Burning Beard" is a fiercely revisionist Bible tale of plague and prophecy told through a postmodern prose of many colors. "The Woman Who Didn't Come Back" is about just what it says. And there is of course PM Press' usual and unusual Outspoken Interview. --Publisher

Taking as their theme the power of two English institutions--the monarchy and the justice system--two stories demonstrate with delectable wit how individuals can become so bound to the institutions they serve that they cease to exist. Hoosh-Mi, Queen Elizabeth II contracts rabies from a corgi; and Bathpool Park, focuses on the trial of Donald Neilson, the so-called "Black Panther," who after a series of post office robberies involving three murders kidnapped seventeen-year-old Lesley Whittle of whose murder he was also convicted.

Two boys, separated by hundreds of years will never know each other--yet together they will battle a great evil at the very heart of the world--The Child Eater. One, Matyas, resides in a medieval world whose power rests with the Academy of Wizards. The other, Simon Wisdom, in present-day America. Their lives are vastly different: as a boy, Matyas is viciously beaten by his innkeeper father, yet he will grow up to become the greatest magician. Simon is deeply loved by his widowed father, Jack, yet even a father's dedication is helpless against the psychic terrors that overwhelm Simon from his earliest years. Matyas and Simon both suffer the same horrific visions: a dark tunnel, pieces of bodies, disembodied heads of children pleading for help. When a new boy's body is found without a head Matyas learns a terrible secret: a magician can live forever by devouring the lives of children. The magician who does this has hidden his name so no one can work a spell against him. He is the Child Eater.

Suggests how gay, lesbian, and bisexual teenagers may discover their sexual orientation, find self-acceptance, come out, cope with prejudice, and deal with religious and political issues.