Product Details:
Format: 
CD
CD
Publisher: Brilliance Corporation
ISBN-10: 1441851569
ISBN-13: 9781441851567
Sku: 213774550
Publish Date: 6/1/2010
Pages:
1
See more in Visionary & Metaphysical
| A dazzling work of fiction, these brief vignettes present a stunning array of possible worlds awaiting each person in the afterlife. Narrators include Brian Eno, Miranda Richardson, and Stephen Fry. |
Annotation:
The possibilities for the afterlife are infinite, and infinity is beyond our imagination, but that has never prevented people from formulating their own ideas about what awaits us in death. In these short stories, neuroscientist David Eagleman has compiled 40 such manifestations of the afterlife, which go far beyond halos, harps or a hot place. What if God is one of the zillion microbes inside us, unaware of our existence as separate entities? What if we are doomed to relive our most mundane actions in their entirety, so that we spend a year sneezing and six months stuck in traffic? What if life has spiraled beyond God's control, such that he has had to outsource our assignments in the afterlife, so that we end up waiting for the bureaucracy of heaven to find our case? Even if it seems highly unlikely that we are cyborgs built to map the planet, or test subjects in a grand survey on relationships, or a family reunion for the atoms in our bodies, these imaginative ideas are certainly conceivable, and sometimes the mere possibility of an idea is more significant than its probability.
The possibilities for the afterlife are infinite, and infinity is beyond our imagination, but that has never prevented people from formulating their own ideas about what awaits us in death. In these short stories, neuroscientist David Eagleman has compiled 40 such manifestations of the afterlife, which go far beyond halos, harps or a hot place. What if God is one of the zillion microbes inside us, unaware of our existence as separate entities? What if we are doomed to relive our most mundane actions in their entirety, so that we spend a year sneezing and six months stuck in traffic? What if life has spiraled beyond God's control, such that he has had to outsource our assignments in the afterlife, so that we end up waiting for the bureaucracy of heaven to find our case? Even if it seems highly unlikely that we are cyborgs built to map the planet, or test subjects in a grand survey on relationships, or a family reunion for the atoms in our bodies, these imaginative ideas are certainly conceivable, and sometimes the mere possibility of an idea is more significant than its probability.
Praise
"For such a slim offering, only 115 pages, Eagleman packs in an afterlife's worth of possibilities, all intriguing and extraordinarily well-written, and most tinged with a beguiling gentleness, humor and optimism that takes the hard edge off of thinking about something so, well, grave."
- Joy Tipping
02/08/2009
"Though categorized as fiction, Eagleman's book is really a collection of thought experiments in which he concisely--as well as informatively and, sometimes, lyrically--proposes what we could expect after our time here is done."
- Oscar Villalon
03/19/2009
"This delightful, though-provoking little collection belongs to that category of strange, unclassifiable books that will haunt the reader long after the last page has been turned....It is...full of touching moments and glorious wit..."
- Alexander McCall Smith
06/14/2009
"SUM is comprised of sometimes ominous but always amusing vignettes of what might happen when we die....The possibilities are endless in the fertile mind of author and neuroscientist David Eagleman..."
- Connie Ogle
07/07/2009
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