The Gates of Polished Horn (Paperback or Softback)

"A delightful collection of stories ranging across genres, whose recurring motif is the distinction between what is real and unreal, a true and a false dream. What this in turn leads to is the raising, usually in a lighthearted way, of the sort of moral questions we’ll soon be having to deal with more frequently.
~ Alex Good, Toronto Star

What happens when you’re face-to-face with a truth that shakes you?

Do you accept it, or pretend it was never there?

Award-winning author Mark A. Rayner smudges the lines between realist and fabulist, literary and speculative in this collection of stories that examines this question—what Homer called passing through The Gates of Polished Horn.

We discover the cruelty of creating synthetic consciousness. A woman is worried that her husband is having an affair but discovers it's much, much worse. A time traveler uncovers a reality-bending fact while observing the death of Socrates. Waldo, of Where's Waldo fame, has an existential crisis. A traveling salesperson is killed on the highway, and this is just the start of his journey through the gates.

Infused with comic insight and tragic vision, this collection invites readers into new realities that
touch on our shared humanity.

“Mark A. Rayner’s formidable storytelling is on full display in this thoughtful and diverse collection. He’s a fine and creative writer whose characters and storylines are quirky, inventive, and often very funny. Bravo!”

~Terry Fallis, two-time winner of the Stephen Leacock Medal for Humour