Review: Gates of Polished Horn by Mark A Rayner

 

Genre: Speculative fiction

Description:

This sort of fiction skips between science fiction and literary. The subjects are usually those that engage people who enjoy reading about real people in the real world, but there is a twist. Not as in crime fiction where (shock, horror!) the butler did not do it, but something … weird. In Britain TTA Press, run by Andy Cox, was the prime exponent of the genre in short form. That, sadly, ceased publication in the Noughties. But here is a whole collection of speculative stories. Yum yum.

Author:

Mark A. Rayner is a Canadian author of science fiction, satire and humour, from London, Ontario. His most recent books are The Gates of Polished Horn (Donovan Street Press, 2025.), Alpha Max (Monkeyjoy Press, 2021) and The Fatness (Monkeyjoy Press, 2017). The latter won and IndieReader Discovery award for humor and an Independent Book Publisher Association (IBPA) award for humor (silver). He has been nominated for the Prix Aurora Award (for short fiction) three times.

The Gates of Polished Horn was selected by the Toronto Star as one of its 20 favourite fiction books of 2025. ^[1]

Rayner teaches in the Faculty of Information and Media Studies at The University of Western Ontario. He is a member of The Writers' Union of Canada, and is a founding member of The Emily Chesley Reading Circle. He is also the co-host of the Re-Creative podcast. And he has cats.

He has a Wikipedia page here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_A._Rayner#References where you can discover his other published works.

Appraisal:

The first thing to say is that this short story collection is first class. Even if you don’t usually read short fiction, you should really give this a try.

The title is found in a quotation from Homer’s Odyssey (book XIX):

“The dreams that pass through the gates of polished horn are fraught with truth, for the dreamer who can see them.” Are you that dreamer? I bet you are.

There are 20 stories in this collection. Some tiny, some much meatier. Here are a few thumb nails to whet your appetite: Socrates and time travel: worms and Adidas: a mind meld with a deer: celebrity cooking (a far cry from Master Chef): in the theatre, the essence of character vis à vis the height of your leading lady.

Each story has a dichotomy at its heart. Some of them simply investigate the human condition, with a penetrating eye. Others bring in outré elements.

I recommend this to you.

Buy now from:            Amazon US        Amazon UK

Format/Typo Issues:

A very few missed proofing errors.

There is an odd tic throughout the book which is an underscore where one would usually expect a hyphen. Is it a badge of slipstream-ery? Or a trick of the file? Having just finished this book I am inclined to say that it means you shouldn’t try to explain _everything_.

Rating: ***** Five Stars

Reviewed by: Judi Moore

Approximate word count: 50-55,000 words