Book of Dreams

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. The author 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.