Sum: Forty Tales from the Afterlives - Softcover

Eagleman, David

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0307389936 ISBN 13: 9780307389930

Publisher: Vintage, 2010

Synopsis

At once funny, wistful and unsettling, Sum is a dazzling exploration of unexpected afterlives—each presented as a vignette that offers a stunning lens through which to see ourselves in the here and now.  In one afterlife, you may find that God is the size of a microbe and unaware of your existence. In another version, you work as a background character in other people’s dreams. Or you may find that God is a married couple, or that the universe is running backward, or that you are forced to live out your afterlife with annoying versions of who you could have been.  With a probing imagination and deep understanding of the human condition, acclaimed neuroscientist David Eagleman offers wonderfully imagined tales that shine a brilliant light on the here and now.

About this title

From the Back Cover:

SUM is a dazzling exploration of funny and unexpected afterlives that have never been considered–each presented as a vignette that offers us a stunning lens through which to see ourselves here and now. In one afterlife you may find that God is the size of a microbe and is unaware of your existence. In another, your creators are a species of dim-witted creatures who built us to figure out what they could not. In a different version of the afterlife you work as a background character in other people’s dreams. Or you may find that God is a married couple struggling with discontent, or that the afterlife contains only those people whom you remember, or that the hereafter includes the thousands of previous gods who no longer attract followers. In some afterlives you are split into your different ages; in some you are forced to live with annoying versions of yourself that represent what you could have been; in others you are re-created from your credit card records and Internet history. David Eagleman proposes many versions of our purpose here; we are mobile robots for cosmic mapmakers, we are reunions for a scattered confederacy of atoms, we are experimental subjects for gods trying to understand what makes couples stick together. These wonderfully imagined tales—at once witty, wistful and unsettling—are rooted in science and romance and awe at our mysterious existence: a mixture of death, hope, computers, immortality, love, biology and desire that exposed radiant new facets of our humanity.

About the Author:

DAVID EAGLEMAN is a neuroscientist, a Guggenheim Fellow, a TED speaker, and a New York Times bestselling author.  His books have been translated into 33 languages. Eagleman runs a neuroscience technology company in Palo Alto, CA, where he teaches at Stanford University and also directs the Center for Science and Law. He is the author and presenter of the Emmy-nominated PBS series The Brain.  At night he writes.

About this edition

• Publisher: Vintage
• Publication date: 2010
• ISBN 10: 0307389936
• ISBN 13: 9780307389930
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 128