Book of Dreams: SF and Speculative Fiction Short Stories

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 an 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 man 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 for a small service, would you be quick to accept? And if we purportedly use only a small fraction of our brain's capacity, what possible purpose does the apparently unused portion serve?

These are some of the questions raised in this collection of science fiction and speculative fiction short stories that explores the interrelationship between dreams and reality, the nature of reality itself, and the dangers attendant to the single-minded pursuit of wish fulfillment that all too often results in 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.

The book is available in Kindle and paperback versions from Amazon.com and other retailers. The entire first short story is available as a preview on Amazon and also on Google Books. (Google books unfortunately also shows a spoiler--the very last page of another short story, Earth Mother, so please don't preview that page.) http://www.amazon.com/Book-Dreams-Science-Speculative-ebook/dp/B005A1GQNO/ref=sr_1_5?ie=UTF8&qid=1331436172&sr=8-5

The stories sound fascinating, Victor. I had a long dispute with Google support over the ending of one of my books showing on Google Books. They refused to make the changes I requested so I pulled the book and had it removed altogether.

Thanks, Shelagh.

I understand Google randomly showing pages, but showing one complete short story and then a single page spoiling the surprise ending to another is very annoying. I added my last three books to Google Books because I wanted as many people as possible to find and preview them. I am not interested in any royalties for whatever advertisement Google adds and will not provide the required personal information due to privacy and security concerns. I may pull at least that book as well which is unfortunate. The Google listing has not had any significant effect on sales in any case, for me at least.