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As Canada's newest metropolis, Vancouver is largely a city of immigrants: people from other countries as well as other provinces. A number of stories in "Zero Gravity" explore the impact of homelessness in this broad sense: the dislocation caused by having to create a new home some vast distance from one's birthplace, and in a city where so many people are in the same situation. In the lightly comic opening story, a woman from Toronto makes the westward journey across Canada, following the road taken by pioneers and migrants since the opening-up of BC. In Vancouver she befriends an Iraqi computer programmer from Winnipeg, with whom she attends an East Vancouver rave sponsored by a collective called 'The Cosmic Elfs'. In another story, a long-time immigrant from the Baltic has her life disturbed by an archaeological discovery in her back yard.

Vancouver's location offers a stunning juxtaposition of city and nature, and this constant contrast -- beautiful, strange, and overwhelming at times -- affects the psyches of those who live there -- or so "Zero Gravity" aims to suggest. In one story, for example, a woman is forced to confront her dishonesty and desperation on a mismanaged expedition to Garibaldi Park. In another, an aspiring filmmaker loses a young child, and possibly his soul, on an eerie, abandoned strip of beach adjacent to the Vancouver airport.

Problems of lost identity and spiritual grounding pervade Western culture. Vancouver, in its freshness, is a city of lyrical promise that attracts those searching for answers. Yet it's also a city whose roots are still young, and this leads to insecurity. The stories in "Zero Gravity" show characters struggling with radical changes to their lives, either imposed by accident or, more mysteriously, surging up from within themselves. In one story, for example, a woman working for a downtown Eastside shelter starts to lose her sense of purpose and mental stability.