Wouldn't it be lovely to live in paradise?

Perhaps... but doesn't everything come at a price? Approaching Paradise presents seven stories where utopia doesn't turn out quite as expected. Perfection might be unique, but imperfection turns out horrible in many different ways....

Meet the weedy loser who believes a body transplant will transform his loveless life, the idealistic couple who put their marriage on hold to rid the world of money, the nonagenarian who sees military service as the only possible source of meaning in a world without illness or ageing, the couple who run from the state when it forecasts their child will grow up a murderer, the four lads on holiday in the robotic holiday resort with a difference, the psychiatric patient who knows that being paranoid doesn't mean they ain't out to get you, and the lion tamer and sandwich connoisseur who discovers that collective hallucinations can take you to some darned strange places – and find out how perfection exacts its price.

Placing real people in grotesque settings and combines the disturbing, Approaching Paradise shows what can happen to our lives when the beautiful vision goes wrong.

Buy it and enter a world of pain....

An Interview with the Author

What made you want to write Approaching Paradise?

The ideas came to me in 2009, when I imagined bizarre thought experiments, like "if a person could transplant their brain into another body, would they still be the same person?" and "what would people do if they never grew old or infirm?" The result was Approaching Paradise.

How do the stories explore reality?

Science fiction allows us authors to do something that conventional fiction cannot: to change the parameters of reality. A conventional novel is constrained by the time and place in which it is set. Science fiction, on the other hand, can be set anywhere, which allows us to remove those constraints and ask, what would happen if we altered technology, encountered alien life, engineered ourselves etc. That's what makes it the perfect vehicle for exploring philosophical thought experiments. Would a world without illness or ageing actually be better? Would a world without money really be free from greed? In Approaching Paradise, I wanted to explore the unintended consequences of trying to create utopia.

What makes Approaching Paradise different from other science fiction?

Science fiction tends to focus primarily on the idea i.e. the changing technology, alien life, bio-engineering and so forth. Literary fiction, by contrast, tends to focus more on the character. I wanted to write science fiction as if it were literary fiction and focus on the people, with realistic characters living realistic lives, albeit in alternate worlds. Then again, "The Usotope" is just flat out ridiculous....

I suppose that would make it Philosophical Literary Science Fiction...

Yes, I was going to term it "Phi-li-sci-fi," but that was just silly.

Why short stories?

I love the feeling of the unexpected when reading short stories, wondering where the next story will take me. It's proved very popular with television anthology shows, such as Black Mirror and Inside No. 9 – not to mention classics from the likes of Philip K. Dick and Arthur C. Clarke (do I have to add an initial to my name?) – but somehow the short story collection has become a seriously underrated format. I think there's a real joy to be had from stories that can be read in one sitting. Let's embrace...