Nick Pateras | Sum
BOOK REVIEW
Sum – David Eagleman
A multitude of enthralling interpretations of the afterlife
Though I write this review several years after initially reading this, Sum retains a special place on my mental bookshelf. I picked it up shortly after my grandfather’s passing and my notes from time of reading recollect that I had hoped for it to deliver an overture to the concept of death, which at that point had not commanded much of my consideration. To this end, it was hugely stimulating and engaging, especially to a reader like myself who holds no beliefs regarding an afterlife.
"Since we live in the heads of those who remember us, we lose control of our lives and become who they want us to be."
Eagleman, renowned especially for his accomplishments in the field of neuroscience, dons the cap of a possibilian with this work by proposing forty distinct representations of life beyond death. These span the imagination, from laboring to support the cosmos’ infrastructure until we get granted our next vacation on Earth to downloading our consciousness into a computer and living forever in a virtual world (which turns out to be a scam). Some stories posit the existence of a divine being while others adopt an overly satirical tone, but in flipping through the three-page chapters, I found myself glued to pondering the motifs behind each one. For instance, one tale portrayed how after death you relived everything you had done in life but grouped together – six weeks waiting for a green light, three years swallowing food, seven months having sex. Not only did this inject in me a yearning to not waste more time than necessary on menial tasks but also an appreciation for life’s episodic structure, where one can experience the joy of hopping from one event to the next in instantaneous fashion. As a casual taster to What Comes Next, this book is an exceptional weekend read for the contemplative mind.
-NP, Nov. 2012