From needle-sprouting cactus skin to a middle-aged body that begins to turn into a university, Manchester author James Hodgson's first pamphlet offers four short stories about mutation and evolution that take being itself to be a supple and slippery thing. These stories engage with metamorphosis both as a metaphysical consequence of being but also as a literary act of defiance and self-determination. Queer men of different stripes undergo transformations...