Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.written From: Simon Laub Sent: Sunday, October 17, 2010 12:05 AM Subject: Sum - Forty tales from the afterlives. Sum - Forty tales from the afterlives. by David Eagleman. Is a lovely small book. Ok, it will probably not tell you that much about the afterlife, but certainly, there are some brilliant insights about life here on Earth! Lovely thought-provoking stories. Where, after reading the 40 stories, you wish for a sequel. Perhaps in the afterlife!? ---- SPOILER ALERT ----- ---- Loved the one about the Spirals: ''...In the far reaches of the multiverse lived a race of dim-witted, obtuse creatures. To dumb to understand the universe, but clever enough to understand that they didnt understand. Millenia passed by in their 5 dimensional like heavens. Then one of them suggested that they should build supercomputers to come up with answers. For millenia they worked in their timeless corner of the multiverse. They weren't that clever, remember? So it took a very, very long time - but finally they came up with a supercomputer. They were happy to turn the computers on. Run them on some far away place called Earth and see what would happen. On completion of a run the people (for yes the super-computers were people) would report back on all of what they had experienced. The experience were a surprise to all. People were surprised to wake up, after dying, surrounded by a group of small dim-witted aliens. Eager for life reports. Eager, actually, for a report on everything. And, the dim-witted aliens were surprised that some 15 billion runs hadn't really produced anything. Their creations reported back about strange things like money, wars, love, feelings. All something their small brains couldn't really comprehend. But they knew they were dimwitted, so perhaps it wasn't surprising that they didn't understand what the supercomputers were talking about.'' --- And there are many others: ''...In the afterlife you discover that life is a game. Your interactions with other people were almost entirely scripted from their point of view. They were actors, when they finished talking to you they waited in back stage waiting areas, where they got snacks from vending machines and drank coffee while they waited for their next appearance in ''your life''.....'' --- ''...When you wake up in the afterlife, the Recreators can now reconstruct you so nicely that you don't know what is life and what is afterlife. It feels so real that you don't know whether reading this text is for the first time, or if it is a replay from something that happened aeons ago''. --- ''...Humans were supposed to explore the world (and love each other only to keep the operation going) and report back. That was the masterplan according to the Cartographers. The Cartographers are disappointed though. These days they scroll through endless reels of useless data. The head-engineer is fired. He has created an engineering marvel that only takes pictures of itself.'' --- ''...If you assume that explanations are a gift from Heaven, you are only half right. It is also a punishment designed for you in Hell. Designed to dry up lifes pleasures by revealing their bloodlessly mechanical nature. But both parties overestimated humans. Does understanding the mechanics of attraction suck all the life out of it? Does knowing how to make wine diminish the pleasure on the tongue? ...'' --- ''...In the afterlife you meet all the other you's. The better you's. In the bookstore you will see one of them arm in arm with the affectionate women whom you let slip away. It is not really nice. And you sink into a defensive posture and go drinking with some of your lesser yous. Even that is not necessarily good. One of them might buy rounds for all of you. After a while you realize that you shouldn't have allowed these annoying you's to be created. '' --- ''When the atoms that are you are no longer you they drift apart. But once every few millenia - just for a short while - all your atoms pull together again. They are driven by nostalgia to reform in the geometry that was once you.'' ---- Lovely stuff... Simon http://www.amazon.com/review/RZQNBGZC4V860/ref=cm_cr_rdp_perm http://simonlaub.posterous.com/sum-forty-tales-from-the-afterlives www.simonlaub.net