Greener Grass

HE WANTED TO ESCAPE HIS PROBLEMS. HE WANTED TO SEE THE FUTURE. HE NEVER CONSIDERED WHAT THE FUTURE WANTED.
Confronted with suffering a painful death from cancer, Dan Sturges, a retired Ford’s engineer, foregoes treatments to try an idea of his own. After reading a theoretical article in Scientific American on time displacement, Dan builds a time machine in his garage. With nothing to lose but a few months of pain, Dan pins his hopes on a future where cancer might have been cured, or at least a quicker death by electrocution. How could he have known that what happens after he presses the button is more shocking than the eighteen car batteries he connected himself to?

Greener Grass is a science fiction short story of 5,600 words by Michael J. Sullivan, author of the fantasy books of The Riyria Revelations and the Riyria Chronicles. This short story was the seed that grew into his full-length novel, Hollow World published in April 2014 by Tachyon Publishing. While the ideas are similar, the two worlds depicted are quite different. In Greener Grass, the world was created to provide a "twilight zone" twist. In Hollow World, the future provides an environment that may be utopian or dystopic depending on the readers perceptions.