Perry Brass is a man of many literary talents and his writings run the gamut from poetry (Sex-charge) to drama (Night Chills) to the heavy-duty Smoky George gayrotic stories (collected in Works). However, if his published works are any indications, Brass's specialty is science fiction. In the "Ki Trilogy" - Mirage, Circles and Albert or The Book of Man - Brass created an alternate world of men-lovin' men at odds with our own, homophobic society. But good as the Ki books are, Brass clearly outdid himself in The Harvest, his latest and his best.

In the Ki Books, Brass created an homoerotic utopia. In The Harvest Brass created the opposite - a society that's dysfunctional through and through. The place is America, and the time is the not-so distant future, when our country is run by an all-powerful Corporation. It is a society of haves and have-nots; a police state where sex, like everything else is a commodity. It is a world of "C-types", "inferior" men and women who live apart and do manual labor. And it is a world of "vaccos", human clones who are raised for their body parts and whose lives are brought to an end in a grisly "harvest".

In George Nader's Chrome, the hero dared to love a robot. In The Harvest (a vastly superior novel) Chris Turner falls in love with a vacco, Hart 256043, who realizes his humanity and seeks to escape his fate. Born poor, Turner is the adopted son of Joshua Devereaux, a filthy-rich Corporate leader who seeks to recreate Chris in his own image, going so far as to give him a new name -- Edgar Morgan Devereaux. In spite of his money and position with the Corporation, Chris/Edgar is not satisfied with his new life among the elite. While looking for love in all the wrong places, Chris meets Hart, on the lam from the Corporate farm where he was "born" and where he is destined to "die". Chris falls in love, in spite of himself, and is willing to tear his world apart for Hart -- but is Hart worth it?

In The Harvest Perry Brass uses his future world as a way to comment on our present one, and setting his sights at Big Government, multinational corporations, Christian communes, police corruption and the popular mania for "law and order". The world of Chris Turner, after all, is not so different from ours. Here, for example, is the Corporation's take on sexual politics:

According to the Corp, sex was all right as long as it was a part of the Corp system, which basically kept the population down. Any cit (short for "citizen") could become part, as it was sweetly defined, of a "philial front," which allowed him, her, or s/hes - we have lots of transies and hermaphrodites who play either role - access to support for their sexuality. If you want guys, go after them. But it's got to be systematized. You can't do it in a way that "bothers, affronts, harasses, or does harm" to other cits. The new Constitution flatly forbids "sexual violence," which means that in certain localities, "evidences of homosexuality" may be consider illegal, as this does "violence" to (i.e. "bothers or affronts") the sensibilities of the local yokels. In other words, you may be fairly safe having sex at home, but just don't look that way at another man on the street. Same-sex marriage is validated by the Constitution, and hordes of men lock themselves into one. This means they are more devoted to their jobs (and the Corporation) than they would be as singles."

A long-time liberationist, Brass is critical of gay "neoconservatives". The Harvest, with its sly dig at "gay marriages," is a chilling reminder of the consequences of assimilation.

Though cloning is still its infancy, Brass takes it to its logical(?) consequences, not to a world of test-tube Einsteins and Gandhis but to a world where humans are created in order to be destroyed. The Harvest looks at what could happen when science goes amuck and humans allow the almighty State (or the almighty Corporation) to control their lives. It is a cautionary tale, and an exciting one, the kind of story the Corporation would not allow its citizens to read but one which we are fortunate to enjoy.

The Harvest can be ordered through Belhue Press at belhuepress@earthlink.net

The Publishing Triangle is an association of lesbians and gay men in publishing that promotes gay literature through social events, readings, panel discussions, and AIDS advocacy. The annual Publishing Triangle Awards are the only national literary awards that offer an honorarium ($1,000) to gay and lesbian writers. Named in memory of gay literary figures who died of AIDS-complications, the Awards include the Bill Whitehead Award for Lifetime Achievement in Lesbian and Gay Literature, the Robert Ferro-Michael Grumley Awards for lesbian and gay fiction, and the Robert Chesley Award for drama.

Armistead Maupin, creator of the Tales of the City series, received the 1997 Bill Whitehead Award. The Ferro-Grumley Award winner for lesbian fiction was Sunnybrook by Persimmon Blackbridge and the winner for gay fiction was The Beauty of Men by Andrew Holleran. The Robert Chesley Award went to playwright Paula Vogel, whose play, How I Learned to Drive, is currently playing off-Broadway.

This year the Publishing Triangle began to honor achievement in lesbian and gay nonfiction by creating the Randy Shilts Award for gay nonfiction and the Judy Grahn Award for lesbian nonfiction – the Triangle broke its own rule by naming an award after the still- living Grahn. The Grahn Award went to Love Between Women: Early Christian Response to Female Homoeroticism by Bernadette Brooten and the Shilts Award went to Thomas Mann: Eros and Literature by Anthony Heilbut.