The highly prolific Jonathan Green is responsible for projects as diverse as the shark-themed anthology Sharkpunk to the Fighting Fantasy retrospective, You Are The Hero. With books from Moshi Monsters tie-ins to steampunk super heroes, Jonathan’s work is always worth a look. We caught up with him to find out more about his latest project, Alice’s Nightmare In Wonderland.

STARBURST: What is Alice’s Nightmare in Wonderland?
Jonathan Green: Alice’s Nightmare in Wonderland is a sequel to Lewis Carroll’s original Alice stories but told in the form of a gamebook, and with a dark steampunk twist.

A gamebook? A bit eighties, isn’t it?
Yes it is, but despite the hey-day of the gamebook being the 1980s, it is a form of literature that has never gone away. And those original gamebook fans from the ’80s are now adults with a passion to indulge the hobbies that they once enjoyed back when life wasn’t so complicated.

Why do you think we keep playing games?
Playing games is how we test ourselves, how we discover we might react or cope in certain situations. Playing games is how children learn about risk as well as how the fit with others in a social context. It’s no different from adults, and playing games with someone tells you a lot about their attitudes towards life in general and their own social values.

Why do are we still fascinated with Alice?
Because despite being 150 years old, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland is like any dream we have all had at one stage or another. That essential human experience hasn’t changed, even if the means through which we share it has. Alice, like so many classics of literature, is essentially timeless.

How is this version different from other Alice inspired works?
It’s a gamebook for a start, and it riffs off Carroll’s other published works, not just the Alice stories. And it’s my own dark steampunk take on the classic, which readers of my Pax Britannia novels know and love.

Why have you gone to Kickstarter?
For books, Kickstarter is a great way of finding a niche market and then targeting that market directly to effectively place pre-orders for a work. If the Kickstarter goes well the book can then have a life beyond the initial Kickstarter, as happened with my previous Kickstarted book, You Are The Hero – A History of Fighting Fantasy Gamebooks.

To find out more about Alice’s Nightmare in Wonderland, go to the Kickstarter here.