The unnamed and irrepressible narrator of Life on a Dead Planet wanders through a city at dusk looking into lit windows and imagining the life within. He has conversations with objects of desire, whether found in secondhand bookshops, or glimpsed floating past him on the pavement; he meets a woman, or several, and constructs lives for them, and watches while a whole world goes about its business without him. All this serves as a pretext for Kuppner's pithy thoughts and private doubts - his wry, bemused voice engages and sparkles with precise and astute observations of human behaviour.