[KKT]∎ Download Sum Forty Tales from the Afterlives David Eagleman 9780307377340 Books

Sum Forty Tales from the Afterlives David Eagleman 9780307377340 Books

Download As PDF : Sum Forty Tales from the Afterlives David Eagleman 9780307377340 Books

Sum Forty Tales from the Afterlives David Eagleman 9780307377340 Books

From a camping ground for old gods no longer worshipped to a heaven in which one can choose to live out eternity as a horse, “Sum: Forty Tales From the Afterlives” is truly a unique work. It is laugh-out-loud funny, it is thought provoking and it is, well, odd. But anyone who has ever wondered what the afterlife will be like will find this book immensely engaging. Take your choice of afterlives. Is God there? Sometimes. Is She confused? Often. Is She infallible? Not exactly. Author David Eagleman, who is described as “a neuroscientist and writer,” treads the lines between science fiction and philosophy, is well versed in mythology and is someone you’d really like to sit down and talk to. This is a fabulous book – in both senses of the word. Read it and you’ll find yourself going back to one of its possibilities just as you’re falling asleep. It’ll give you something to think about during those times of day when the mind drifts off into its remotest frontiers. It’ll remind you of being a child and wondering about subjects such as a reflection inside a reflection inside a reflection. This book cannot be highly recommended enough. Just take my word and read it.


Tags : Sum: Forty Tales from the Afterlives [David Eagleman] on Amazon.com. *FREE* shipping on qualifying offers. SUM</i> 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,David Eagleman,Sum: Forty Tales from the Afterlives,Pantheon,0307377342,Short Stories (single author),Future life;Fiction.,God;Fiction.,Short stories.,American Contemporary Fiction - Individual Authors +,Fiction,Fiction - General,Fiction Short Stories (single author),Fiction Visionary & Metaphysical,Future life,God,Visionary & Metaphysical

Sum Forty Tales from the Afterlives David Eagleman 9780307377340 Books Reviews

A clever, creative, mind-twisting collection of short bits of genius. Eagleman presents 2-3 page examinations of what an “afterlife” might be. Maybe you spend eternity repeating what you did in life, except in activity groups Six straight days clipping your toenails, 32 uninterrupted years sleeping, 200 days showering, etc. Maybe the afterlife shows you that life is a dream, but it is someone else’s dream and you’re just a background character. Or God is real, but he is really the God of microbes and we are just the carriers of the important life in the Universe. Each bit has a twist on the end. After a few of these you realize that Eagleman isn’t trying to show you what an afterlife will be; instead each bit is a clever way of re-examining our own human lives, from many perspectives. 110 pages that can keep you talking and thinking for days. Somewhat modeled after *Einstein’s Dreams* by Alan Lightman.
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 book is a series of conjectures about the nature of the afterlife, and necessarily, the nature of God. Each tale relates the author's ideas on what happens when we die and the period following that ending. Each story is written matter-of-factly and is quite believable until the reader tries to keep reminding himself grounded in the "real" afterlife, which no one can really prove, one way or another. The comparison keeps the brain busy with maintaining the self in reality, while being curious about the latest tale and how reasonable it seems if you ignore the "facts." The facts themselves would find itself at home in the volume, and therefore the "real" afterlife is no more believable than the various make-believe versions. A friend who also read the book commented that it made him feel as if he were being "eaten alive."
From a camping ground for old gods no longer worshipped to a heaven in which one can choose to live out eternity as a horse, “Sum Forty Tales From the Afterlives” is truly a unique work. It is laugh-out-loud funny, it is thought provoking and it is, well, odd. But anyone who has ever wondered what the afterlife will be like will find this book immensely engaging. Take your choice of afterlives. Is God there? Sometimes. Is She confused? Often. Is She infallible? Not exactly. Author David Eagleman, who is described as “a neuroscientist and writer,” treads the lines between science fiction and philosophy, is well versed in mythology and is someone you’d really like to sit down and talk to. This is a fabulous book – in both senses of the word. Read it and you’ll find yourself going back to one of its possibilities just as you’re falling asleep. It’ll give you something to think about during those times of day when the mind drifts off into its remotest frontiers. It’ll remind you of being a child and wondering about subjects such as a reflection inside a reflection inside a reflection. This book cannot be highly recommended enough. Just take my word and read it.