"For this volume - an SFBC Creation - Silverberg asked some of today's best sf writers to take a fresh look at this inexhaustible theme, and they came up with a collection of dazzlingly original tales. All the novellas here encapsulate the star-faring theme with an intriguing twist: characters in transit between worlds are undergoing internal transitions as well. In Stephen Baxter's eponymous lead story, a virtual messiah takes advantage of a desperate refugee's pleas for help to get himself transferred off-world for a jaunt to Galaxy's Core and a new life.".