What price would you pay to revisit a crossroad in your life when you
had made a terrible, life altering mistake? Would you give up an
unfulfilled life for the chance of virtual happiness in a
computer-generated alternate reality? Would you sacrifice everything if
you could attain absolute knowledge? If so, could you live with the
knowledge you attained? It is said that no person is an island, but what
if even the least among us is a god in his/her own right? If an alien
visitor offered you a lifetime of health and the gift of telepathy in
exchange for a small service, would you be quick to accept? And if
consciousness utilizes only a small portion of our brain, what function
does the larger, presumably unused portion actually serve?
These are some of the questions explored in this collection of science fiction and
speculative fiction short stories that probes the interrelationship
between dreams and reality, the nature of reality itself, and the
dangers attendant to the single-minded pursuit of wish fulfillment with
its attendant unexpected and unwanted consequences. Most of the short
stories published here were written and revised over a period of more
than thirty years (1977- 2011) and, with the exception of "To Sleep,
Perchance to Dream" have not been previously published.
Victor D. Lopez is an Associate Professor of Legal Studies at Hofstra University's Frank
G. Zarb School of Business and has previously published seven
non-fiction books through traditional publishers. His business law and
legal environment textbooks have been used in colleges and universities
throughout the United States since 1993. This is his first fiction
collection.
Book of Dreams: Science Fiction and Speculative Fiction Short Stories is available in paperback ($7.95 list price) from CreateSpace and is also available in both paperback and eBook versions ($2.99) from Amazon and Barnes and Noble.