Sum: Forty Tales from the Afterlives by David Eagleman (PDF)

Description

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.

User’s Reviews

Reviews from Amazon users which were colected at the time this book was published on the website:

⭐Bite-sized stories of the afterlife that provoke thought and reflection. It’s almost too much to read at one time and, at least for me, best consumed a few stories at a time. Each is worthy of time to consider its premise and the implications for your life today.

⭐This book joins a growing canon of “idea stories” by Ted Chiang, Italo Calvino, Jorge Luis Borges, Franz Kafka, etc. that dip in and out compelling ways of reframing the world, providing just enough fuel to launch the imagination.These are 40 concepts of the afterlife, God, and the mind, and one’s purpose–many of which I’ve seen in all sorts of science fiction and fantasy, from Marvel Comics to Neil Gaiman, to Black Mirror, to The Matrix. But they’re tiny presentations–3 to 4 pages each–that give the reader just enough. Some are chilling, some are poignant, and some read like jokes. I suspect I’ll revisit several, and they’ll take on different tones.It’s a delightful book.

⭐This is one of my favorite books to read before bed. I read one story at a time and ponder it as I fall asleep. What an incredible book with amazing short stories.

⭐Thoroughly enjoyed this collection of thought provoking short stories! Very well written.

⭐The chapters are short so it’s a great read for when you’re in the bathroom and you forgot your phone lol.

⭐This is a quick, enjoyable read of forty different possibilities after death. I found all the stories intriguing. Each chapter is just a few pages long. I read it in just a couple of hours; starting it one evening before bed and finished the next as our plane was approaching home after a trip to Chicago.It’s difficult to write about this without giving too much away; if you want take the stories at their freshest, stop reading my review and read the book now. Come back when you’ve finished (in an hour or two) to compare your thoughts with mine.In many of the chapters we can’t communicate with God, or the creator(s), because there are such differences of scale or understanding. “Do you think it would have any meaning at all if you displayed one of your Shakespearean plays to a bacterium? Of course not. Meaning varies with spatial scale. So we have concluded that communicating with her is not impossible, but it is pointless.” (P 16). Also: “She is the elephant described by the blind men; all partial descriptions with no understanding of the whole.” (P 99)This theme resonates with me; I first saw a form of this idea on the original Cosmos with Carl Sagan. Because God is beyond us we can’t perfectly conceive of him (Sagan was talking about aliens not God). Consider a two dimensional universe; one with length and width but no height – thinner than a flattest, thinnest paper. Beings in this universe would develop math and philosophy based on their experiences. Then suppose a cube appears over the universe casting a varying shaped shadow as it revolves above this two dimensional universe. The two dimensional beings could see the shadow shape change but could not conceive of a three dimensional cube. We can only conceive of those things which meet our scale.Other stories show the creator(s) were imperfect and even heaven is imperfect. “He is in the position of an amateur magician who performs for small children and suddenly has to play to skeptical adults.” (P 93). Even then all is not lost: “He has recently faced his limitations, and this has brought Him closer to us.” (P 94)Still another recurring theme considers our physical, atomic structure of bacterium, molecules, atoms and quarks. “But it turns out your thousand trillion trillion atoms were not an accidental collection; each was labeled as composing you and continues to be so wherever it goes. So you’re not gone, your’e simply taking on different forms.” (P106).My favorite story was the last: Reversal where we live our lives backward “The pleasures of a lifetime of intercourse are relived, culminating in kissed instead of sleep.” (P109)The most disturbing story was chapter four: Descent of Species. When given a chance to go back to earth as anything you want, pick wisely.David Eagleman is a neuroscientist, not a theologian or a philosopher. This book is not for conservative religious, regardless of faith. But if you would like a small diversion to consider what might be ahead of us.

⭐The late medical student-turned-author Michael Crichton captured the attention of millions with blockbuster novels and movie adaptations that fused science and science fiction to raise some jarring, yet thought provoking issues. Now comes David Eagleman, a young neuroscientist, to do the same, but in a more spiritually lofty and truly innovative way.It would be easy to describe “Sum” as a breezy work, as it is comprised of 40 two-to-three page flights of fancy on what we might expect in the Afterlife. This slim volume can be read hurriedly, with a minimum of effort and several chuckles or knowing smiles, then placed on the bookshelf. To do so would be an injustice to Eagleman’s superior imagination and to the underlying questions that he poses for us.By examining what a Higher Power may have waiting for us, “Sum” does much more than amuse and entertain. By having us ponder the fate that may await us, we are given the opportunity to take just a moment or two to consider what we have done with our lives and what we can yet do with them. That point is immediately driven home in the first of Eagleman’s 40 tales, in which the Afterlife consists of 18 days staring into the refrigerator, 51 days deciding what to wear, three months doing laundry – and 14 minutes experiencing pure joy.If God is within us physically, the author asks, is he also in us spiritually? If we evolve and mature in our lives, what is the progression? Would we really, truly like to understand our stages of growth, or would we be repelled? Would we genuinely want to know what others thought of us on earth, or would we be content with the surface flattery and half-truths that pass so many times for constructive criticism or helpful friendship? If we want to leave a positive legacy on earth after we pass, does it matter what form that might take? Would we be happy struggling and growing as we did in human form, but doing so by literally becoming part of the earth? Would our threshold for boredom be pushed to the limit if we had the opportunity to be surrounded by a tried-and-true circle of friends and loved ones? Or might we find that confining, longing for the additional relationships that we never took the time to cultivate in our waking lives, terra firma?”Sum” asks these and many other questions in sublime fashion, offering spiritual warmth, humor and an enveloping sense of Possibility to those willing to be just a little less doctrinaire and a bit more curious. Ending with a Benjamin Button-like moment, it challenges us to awaken from whatever inertia, ennui or pettiness we may fall prey to and embrace new ways of living. There must be at least 40 of them. If we are open to the possibilities of the Afterlife, can we not also be open to the possibilities of living?”Sum” just may go down as the 21st Century’s answer to Dante’s centuries-old imaginings. I’m guessing David Eagleman’s got a lot more locked inside him, just waiting to burst forth.

⭐Lots of out-of-the-box food for thought !

⭐A very good collection of themed shorts – 4 StarsThere are many reasons I enjoyed this collection. Here are just a few:● Each tale is only a few pages long – perfect reading for lunch breaks.● Although the concept of God appears in some tales, this is not a book centred on religion or religious beliefs.● The collection works to evoke a range of emotions – some of the ‘Afterlives’ were pleasing constructs, others definitely not.● The concepts of life and death are not fixed – the author is just as inventive with imagined timescales.● The book is well written and well presented – the number of editing errors in the Kindle version I read was minimal.● As with all collections, I liked some of the tales more than others, but each was so short I never felt ‘bogged-down’ by any one of them.The only reason I didn’t give this the full 5 Star rating is I felt the tales were heavily weighted towards maths, science and technology, and perhaps a few ideas centred around a more arts orientated interpretation would have added an additional dimension. That said, this is a very good read, and I’d definitely recommend it if you’re looking for something thought provoking and a little bit different.

⭐I bought my first copy of this book at a bookshop on Charing Cross Road (Foyles, I think), back in 2009 or so.I had no idea what it was about but it had a lovely cover and I felt like taking a risk.I opened it on the tube. And I didn’t stop reading (except to walk home) until I was done.The next day, I returned to Foyles and bought another five copies, which I gave to various friends. Since then, I have always had at least one copy in my house. But I try to keep two copies, because you never know when one of your guests is going to turn out to be EXACTLY the type of person who will love this book.It’s charming, wonderful, happy, grim, dark, pessimistic, optimistic, and mind-expanding.All in manageable min-chunks.

⭐The starting point is presuming that there is an Afterlife at all, – If there isn’t, then no book, – Not a question that can be answered. This is a book I need to read again to ensure i,ve distilled all the points, it’s very thought provoking – some of the possible afterlives are not too wonderful, – some are disturbing, the various types of deity, not all comes across as in the biblical sense of divine beings. I think all of us speculate as we get older and grow, – what might happen to us? – and this book adds value to those thoughts. – not a big book and well worth taking time to read.

⭐Forty short visions of possible afterlives, each one dense, twisty and thought-provoking. If you enjoy writers like Borges, Douglas Adams, and Stanislaw Lem, this is for you. But don’t binge on it all at once. In fact, I recommend one vision per day, reading each of them at least twice.This seems to be the only fiction this author has written. I do hope he can manage a novel one of these days.

⭐If you want a book that will make you think, this is the one. If you want a book that seems to be made up of small snacks but find that each of them burst in your mouth with a million flavours, this is the one. If you want a book of very short stories that linger in your mind and are written by a man of genius whose imagination and insights are breathtaking, this is the one.

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