David Eagleman

This is a suite of variations on the possibilities of different kinds of afterlives. Each of the forty tales is usually only about a couple of pages long, but each one is densely packed with mind-bending what-ifs. He imagines wildly different ways that an afterlife, if it existed, could be structured. Some are exquisitely sad, such as this first paragraph from 'Metamorphosis': "There are three deaths. The first is when the body ceases to function. The second is when the body is consigned to show more the grave. The third is that moment, sometime in the future, when your name is spoken for the last time." Others offer the possibility of a sublime eternity, in which the self is split into an infinite set of selves, as in a prism, which exist simultaneously, and interact, as multiple versions of the self at different ages, meeting together periodically at reunions.
This is one to re-read, in parts, randomly. Delightful. show less

Comfortably readable, filled with fascinating anecdotes, details and facts, and totally absorbing, David Eagleman’s The Brain offers the reader’s brain much to ponder, while explaining much about how differently we each will ponder it. I’ve wondered sometimes why my brother and I remember the same events and conversations so differently—now I have more idea; I’ve wondered how someone could change so suddenly from understanding everything to understanding little—now it makes show more sense; and I’ve wondered how some people I know can be so indecisive—I’ll excuse them easier now. Which, I guess, means reading the Brain hasn’t just informed me, but it’s also given me a deeper empathy and a wider worldview.

In my own worldview, I remain convinced there’s more to me than my present or my changing consciousness. But I’m fascinated by the discoveries described in this book—by John Robinson’s experience of change with Aspergers, by experimental treatment for cocaine users, by the way we might inadvertently reduce our empathy, and the implications for and of genocide. Scary stuff.

Some of the examples in this book seemed less convincing than others, some of the images were hard to discern in a paperback copy, and some of the arguments seemed geared toward the physical world being all that truly exists, when I'm sure it's not. But I love this book, and recommend it highly. A really cool read.

Disclosure: I got it on a deal. show less

It was inevitable that a book with as high a concept as David Eagleman's Sum would have a reach that exceeded its grasp. Subtitled 'Tales from the Afterlives', it is a collection of short stories or vignettes (each no more than 2 or 3 pages), each with a different take on what form the afterlife might take and sometimes with a slight twist at their end. Neither entirely mystical nor rational, the tone of Eagleman's book has a good balance between faith and reason, between physics and show more metaphysics. Some of the vignettes are clever – I particularly liked 'Quantum' – but most move you only for a moment before you move on to the next one and forget them entirely.

To match its high concept, Sum needed to possess writing of profound genius. But – perhaps inevitably – it does not. I first heard about the book after reading Zachary Mason's The Lost Books of the Odyssey, which is a similar collection of vignettes that provide clever twists and perspectives on Greek mythology. But whereas Mason's book had a laconic style that matched its Greek source, and could rely on those ancient stories as an unspoken hinterland, Eagleman's proposals for an afterlife must start from scratch. He introduces 'Creators' or 'Programmers' to various stories in Sum, but the stories are far too short to construct these concepts convincingly, and while some of them generate a brief frictional warmth from their twist, too often the reader is left cold.

There are some flaws in the pared-back writing (for example, God is regularly referred to as a 'she', which can only be a self-conscious affectation, especially for a male writer), but the main problem is that the stories are between a rock and a hard place. Keep them short and they have no time to root deep; extend them and you lose the laconic quality that makes them thought-provoking in the first place. Rather than ascending, Eagleman's tales from the afterlives get stuck in this conceptual purgatory, and there are as many misfires as sparks. Sum is fertile ground, but you're left wishing some of the seeds had been sown. show less

[Sum:Forty Tales from the Afterlives] by [[David Eagleman] is a one of a kind collection of parables about what happens after you die. The title comes from Descartes' "Cogito ergo sum", I think therefore I am, and the good news is in these stories you get to keep thinking and am-ing after death. In one, the paradisal afterlife is equally unsatisfying to everyone: "The Communists are baffled and irritated, because they have finally achieved their perfect society, but only by the help of a God show more in whom they don't want to believe. The meritocrats are abashed that they're stuck in eternity in an incentiveless system with a bunch of pinkos. The conservatives have no penniless to disparage; the liberals have no downtrodden to promote." How terrible! In another the religious warring among true believers continues, which apparently is much more satisfying.

He comes at you from mind-opening angles. In one you get to relive your life by categories of activities, rather than sequential time, so you spend six days clipping your nails, 18 months standing in line, and so on. In another you get to choose your next incarnation, e.g. as a horse, and you'd better choose wisely. Another one that caught my fancy is his positing that we are sophisticated machines created by a stupider race to help answer their questions about life. However, they have trouble understanding how we live our lives and what our answers to high level questions mean - which then gets compared to our relationship with the sophisticated machines we have created in this life.

Each of these very short stories in an approximately 100 page paperback made me stop and think a while about its message. Eagleman's a neuroscientist, and the closest comparison I can think of to this book is physics professor [[Alan Lightman]]'s great book of short story-fables, [Einstein's Dreams], in which Einstein dreams of places where time acts differently than the way we conceive it. Here, [[Eagleman]] is able to poke humbling holes in our foibles and assumptions through his stories of what the afterlife may be.

I saw one reviewer called this a work of genius, and that fits. Thanks to Megan for recommending this one. show less