Lost Futures

Book excerpt: Shortlisted for the Arthur C. Clarke Award and the James Tiptree Jr. Award, this literary science-fiction novel by award-winning author Lisa Tuttle is 'a brilliant exploration of the relationship between quantum mechanics, human choice and alternate worlds' The Oxford Times Sometimes, those roads not taken can come back and haunt you. Clare's unhappy life hasn't gone the way she expected. At the age of thirty-three she's still an accountant, still unmarried and ridden with guilt over the tragic death of her brother. Her obsession with roads not taken drives her into a nervous breakdown, until she comes to realise that she can leave her unsatisfactory "real life" behind and enter alternate realities where things worked out better. But when she explores these other existences, she discovers they are far from the perfect lives she was imagining, and wherever she turns, another Clare usurps her own existence, until she is forced into the ultimate confrontation with madness - and truth . . .