Sum: Forty Tales from the Afterlives

By David Eagleman

At once funny, wistful and unsettling, Sum is a dazzling exploration of unexpected afterlives—each presented as a vignette that offers a stunning lens through which to see ourselves in the here and now.  In one afterlife, you may find that God is the size of a microbe and unaware of your existence. In another version, you work as a background character in other people’s dreams. Or you may find that God is a married couple, or that the universe is running backward, or that you are forced to live out your afterlife with annoying versions of who you could have been.  With a probing imagination and deep understanding of the human condition, acclaimed neuroscientist David Eagleman offers wonderfully imagined tales that shine a brilliant light on the here and now.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
• Release date: Feb 10, 2009
• ISBN: 9780307378026

David Eagleman

David Eagleman (Nuevo México, 1971) es neurocientífico y profesor en la Universidad de Stanford. Es Guggenheim Fellow y director del Center for Science and Law. Su libro Incógnito. Las vidas secretas del cerebro, publicado por Anagrama, se tradujo a veintiocho idiomas y fue elegido Mejor Libro de 2011 por Amazon, el Boston Globe y el Houston Chronicle. En esta colección se ha publicado también El cerebro. Nuestra historia, La especie desbocada, coescrito con Anthony Brandt y Una red viva. La historia interna de nuestro cerebro en cambio permanente

Book preview

Sum

In the afterlife you relive all your experiences, but this time with the events reshuffled into a new order: all the moments that share a quality are grouped together.

You spend two months driving the street in front of your house, seven months having sex. You sleep for thirty years without opening your eyes. For five months straight you flip through magazines while sitting on a toilet.

You take all your pain at once, all twenty-seven intense hours of it. Bones break, cars crash, skin is cut, babies are born. Once you make it through, it’s agony-free for the rest of your afterlife.

But that doesn’t mean it’s always pleasant. You spend six days clipping your nails. Fifteen months looking for lost items. Eighteen months waiting in line. Two years of boredom: staring out a bus window, sitting in an airport terminal. One year reading books. Your eyes hurt, and you itch, because you can’t take a shower until it’s your time to take your marathon two-hundred-day shower. Two weeks wondering what happens when you die. One minute realizing your body is falling. Seventy-seven hours of confusion. One hour realizing you’ve forgotten someone’s name. Three weeks realizing you are wrong. Two days lying. Six weeks waiting for a green light. Seven hours vomiting. Fourteen minutes experiencing pure joy. Three months doing laundry. Fifteen hours writing your signature. Two days tying shoelaces. Sixty-seven days of heartbreak. Five weeks driving lost. Three days calculating restaurant tips. Fifty-one days deciding what to wear. Nine days pretending you know what is being talked about. Two weeks counting money. Eighteen days staring into the refrigerator. Thirty-four days longing. Six months watching commercials. Four weeks sitting in thought, wondering if there is something better you could be doing with your time. Three years swallowing food. Five days working buttons and zippers. Four minutes wondering what your life would be like if you reshuffled the order of events. In this part of the afterlife, you imagine something analogous to your Earthly life, and the thought is blissful: a life where episodes are split into tiny swallowable pieces, where moments do not endure, where one experiences the joy of jumping from one event to the next like a child hopping from spot to spot on the burning sand.

Egalitaire

In the afterlife you discover that God understands the complexities of life. She had originally submitted to peer pressure when She structured Her universe like all the other gods had, with a binary categorization of people into good and evil. But it didn’t take long for Her to realize that humans could be good in many ways and simultaneously corrupt and mean-spirited in other ways. How was She to arbitrate who goes to Heaven and who to Hell? Might not it be possible, She considered, that a man could be an embezzler and still give to charitable causes? Might not a woman be an adulteress but bring pleasure and security to two men’s lives? Might not a child unwittingly divulge secrets that splinter a family? Dividing the population into two categories—good and bad—seemed like a more reasonable task when She was younger, but with experience these decisions became more difficult. She composed complex formulas to weigh hundreds of factors, and ran computer programs that rolled out long strips of paper with eternal decisions. But Her sensitivities revolted at this automation—and when the computer generated a decision She disagreed with, She took the opportunity to kick out the plug in rage. That afternoon She listened to the grievances of the dead from two warring nations. Both sides had suffered, both sides had legitimate grievances, both pled their cases earnestly. She covered Her ears and moaned in misery. She knew Her humans were multidimensional, and She could no longer live under the rigid architecture of Her youthful choices.

Not all gods suffer over this; we can consider ourselves lucky that in death we answer to a God with deep sensitivity to the byzantine hearts of Her creations.

For months She moped around Her living room in Heaven, head drooped like a bulrush, while the lines piled up. Her advisors advised Her to delegate the decision making, but She loved Her humans too much to leave them to the care of anyone else.

In a moment of desperation the thought crossed Her mind to let everyone wait on line indefinitely, letting them work it out on their own. But then a better idea struck Her generous spirit. She could afford it: She would grant everyone, every last human, a place in Heaven. After all, everyone had something good inside; it was part of the design specifications. Her new plan brought back the bounce to Her gait, returned the color to Her cheeks. She shut down the operations in Hell, fired the Devil, and brought every last human to be by Her side in Heaven. Newcomers or old-timers, nefarious or righteous: under the new system, everyone gets equal time to speak with Her. Most people find Her a little garrulous and oversolicitous, but She cannot be accused of not caring.

The most important aspect of Her new system is that everyone is treated equally. There is no longer fire for some and harp music for others. The afterlife is no longer defined by cots versus waterbeds, raw potatoes versus sushi, hot water versus champagne. Everyone is a brother to all, and for the first time an idea has been realized that never came to fruition on Earth: true equality.

The Communists are baffled and irritated, because they have finally achieved their perfect society, but only by the help of a God in whom they don’t want to believe. The meritocrats are abashed that they’re stuck for eternity in an incentiveless system with a bunch of pinkos. The conservatives have no penniless to disparage; the liberals have no downtrodden to promote.

So God sits on the edge of Her bed and weeps at night, because the only thing everyone can agree upon is that they’re all in Hell.

Circle of Friends

When you die, you feel as though there were some subtle change, but everything looks approximately the same. You get up and brush your teeth. You kiss your spouse and kids and leave for the office. There is less traffic than normal. The rest of your building seems less full, as though it’s a holiday. But everyone in your office is here, and they greet you kindly. You feel strangely popular. Everyone you run into is someone you know. At some point, it dawns on you that this is the afterlife: the world is only made up of people you’ve met before.

It’s a small

Reviews for Sum

[tgraettinger_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

1. Surprising.
2. Inventive. Never thought about God as a bacterium.
3. Chapters were short and easy to digest in a sitting.
4. Book itself was short, but still filled with 40 thought-provoking possibilities.
5. Author blurb was very short and sweet: *David Eagleman is a neuroscientist and a writer.*
6. Chapter titles were almost always only one or two words that communicated a key image, thought, or idea germane to the chapter.
7. Connected directly to the book *How to Live* by Derek Sivers, which we dedicated to this one.
8. I enjoyed *How to Live* more, but this grew on me the more I read.
9. It was better for me to binge-read the last five chapters versus reading one or two chapters at breakfast.
10. Would read another book by Eagleman. He seems like a worthy author. Would probably read another book by Sivers first, though.

**Rating:** ⭐⭐⭐⭐☆ (4 out of 5) — for creativity and brevity of thought and communication.

[cheryl_in_cc_nv · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

My library tagged this as SF. It's def. make-believe, nonetheless I think it could be shelved as philosophy/ religion. Otoh, some stories (?essays? flash fiction pieces?) are likely blasphemous to some ppl of faith.

I almost want to read it with a highlighter, though, because, as I close it, after trying to read it carefully in small batches, I find I remember nothing of it. Except:

It's told in second person, and over and over the author says "... your lover... she...." Would it kill him to say her name once in a while? It's as if the only readers allowed to this are male ones. :sigh:

Well, in any case, somehow, I enjoyed many of them, esp. among the earlier ones. Clever. Some funny, some truly thought-provoking, most well-written, some almost poetic. Recommended *iff* you're interested.

[setnahkt · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

An amusing little book of short speculations on possible afterlives. In one vignette, it’s endless white suburbia; in another it’s endless war. Worth a read; fast.

[cail_judy · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Got this out for the Nick Cave readings. Listened to a bunch - the stories are excellent. Witty and subversive.

[bcpeterson727 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

I've wanted to read this book for quite awhile. Some of the stories blew my mind, some went way over my head, and others were just 'meh'. Overall it was a great read though.

[isatyajeet · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

A good short read.

[tkilgore-1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

While several tales in this book are thought provoking or amusing, the book was, in my opinion, about 20 tales too long. Several themes, like the consequences resulting from differences of scale, were overworked. And, to sum up the whole compilation, the implied conclusion that all afterlives will disappoint was the most overworked theme of all.

[simchaboston · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Odd but compelling collection of vignettes. Eagleman’s scenarios are all afterlives with very inventive twists. A common theme is technology gone awry, but not in the way you’d think. In these situations, we’re the technology, designed with some goal in mind that we don’t know about, and we often end up thwarting this goal despite our creator’s (or creators’) best intentions. I wouldn’t want to end up in some of these “heavens,” but they do provide lots of food for thought -- and inspiration to act differently just in case any of them are true!

[thebookjunky · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

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 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.

[thedivineoomba · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This is an odd little book - it includes 40 tales about various after lives - such as you are stuck in an airport waiting room until no one remembers you (Sucks to be Shakespeare). Or the universe where there is no afterlife, where multi-celled creatures are just a transport for bacteria. There is even a universe where humans are just a construct in a computer, the afterlife is where you get asked questions about life.

Its an odd little book, each story says something about humanity. Some are better than others, but as a complete volume, very good.

[petterw_2 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

This is a remarkable little book, more inventive than anything I have read for a long, long time. David Eagleman has written 40 miniature suggestions of what the afterlife may contain. In the process he makes the reader think more about his life than his death and what possibly comes after death. Some of the stories are hilarious, most of them astoundingly clever. Most of his "theories" are mutually exclusive, because sometimes there's a god, sometimes two, sometimes none. Sometimes he or she is dead, other times humans have important jobs to do out in the universe and life is a holiday away from this work. I wish I had as many good ideas in a lifetime as Eagleman has in his 40 stories, The only weakness is in the edit; with 5-10 fewer stories this would have been an unbeatable masterpiece.

[polaris4_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

A diverting collection of imaginative explorations into the possible Afterlife. Most are brief and fleeting, and leave the reader with a tantalising glimpse of what could be. Some are simplistic representations of complex organisms breaking down, or of atomic compounds reforming into different incarnations or entities; others are jarring visualisations of dystopic existences that make the humdrum surroundings the reader may find themselves in gain a sudden appeal not noticed before! Several are actually quite uplifting and genuinely surprising. This is a pleasant and thoughtful read overall.

With an impressive array of voices and styles, David Eagleman has managed to genuinely provide pause for thought with these thought-provoking essays. Encompassing themes of religion, love, family, possessions, ethics, organic chemistry, inter-galactic wars and others - there is some good value here. Even a little humour to boot.

Unfortunately I felt that the cumulative effect of the 'forty tales' was that too many were too similar or reminiscent of those already discovered. My personal preference might have been for ten or twenty essays which might have had the luxury in time and space to really explore some bright ideas that too often came across as not much more than a decent plot for an above-average sci-fi episode on TV.

[meredy_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Six-word review: Life glimpsed as if from beyond.

Extended review: In 110 small pages, author and neuroscientist Eagleman treats us to forty vignettes displaying perspectives on life as if seen in a rear-view mirror.

This is not a book about religion or spirituality, and it does not summon us to believe, but rather to be aware of our lives in present time. Each of these small gems is both fanciful and philosophical, some silly and some profound, all of them out of the ordinary by either a little or a lot.

What if the repetitive actions of our lives--showering, standing in line, signing our names--were performed not intermittently but each in one long, unbroken sequential turn? What if the molecules that make up our bodies missed being part of the old gang once it's broken up and redistributed? What if we were invented as computing machines to enable some lower form of intelligence to discover the answers to their big questions? These interesting speculations on the cosmic mysteries, from two to four pages apiece, are like sparklers on the Fourth of July: not starbursts that light up the sky and awe the multitude, perhaps, but entertaining by ones and twos, small enough that we can handle them and still feel that we've played a modest part in the greater show.

The originality of Eagleman's perceptions and their accessible presentation on this miniature scale make Sum impossible to rank alongside 800-page novels and weighty works of scholarship. I'm giving it three and a half "I really liked it" stars without reflecting any regard or disregard toward comparable works, of which I can't think of any.

[y2ash · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I have heard about the author, neuroscientist and philosopher David Eagleman, before because his nonfiction work, Incognito, is currently on display at my local bookstore. However, I became really impressed with Eagleman when he spoke at the Brooklyn Academy of Music where he discussed dreams and perception while we watched the 2010 movie Inception.

During the Q&A portion, he discussed Sum: Forty Tales from the Afterlives and it got me curious. I'm glad it did because Sum is amazing! In Sum, Eagleman describes 40 short versions of afterlives ranging from a fast moving quark, encountering Gods who are not as intelligent as us, Us literally being Actors in real life, Us who are high processing cameras for Gods known as Cartographers, and a giant reversal of life, itself.

My favorites were Metamorphosis, Mary, Sum, Graveyard of the Gods, Narcissus, and Death Switch. My only complaint is that the tales were too short! I wanted more and I would have loved more but I guess "it's sheer elegance in its simplicity."

[phredfrancis · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

These forty short stories speculate the forms an afterlife might take. They are conceptual, thought-provoking, quirky, and often quite poetic. In length they remind me of Etgar Keret's stories, but in tone they conjure up hints of Italo Calvino's works. I enjoyed the brevity of the tales, and I think the author David Eagleman has a style that is both lyrical and compact, but I couldn't help but wonder how much more resonance some of the stories might achieve if their concepts had been expanded. This is all to say that I would happily read more of his work, and I hope that he attempts something in a longer form, because I thoroughly enjoyed these tales.

[msbaba · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Open this slim, delightful, and clever book and take a journey inside the mind of David Eagleman, a remarkable modern-day renaissance man. Eagleman is a brilliant, accomplished neuroscientist who also happens to have a B. A. in British and American literature. He has both a fierce love for literature and an insatiable scientific curiosity. He is also the kind of all-around normal type of guy who makes a stand-out charming guest on “The Colbert Report.” This background is a marvelous brew and makes any journey through his gifted brain a unique intellectual delight.

In this book, Eagleman sets his prodigious creative genius to the task of imagining a set of forty different fates that might await us in the afterlife. These forty vignettes are fantasies; he’s not serious. It’s probably best to think of them as “thought experiments.” Certainly, most were done for fun; however, in some cases, along the way, some significant and profound ideas are uncovered.

The book is only 128 pages, but it is one of those svelte beauties that is best read a little at a time; in fact, if you try to read too many of these brief narratives in one sitting, the vignettes start to fade and lose their luster. Eagleman is a powerful prose stylist; he has obviously read a great deal of fine literature and knows how to put words together effectively. Many of the tales would be very entertaining if read out loud at a social gathering.

Because Eagleman is a scientist, it is not surprising that many of the forty afterlife narratives contain parodies of well-accepted scientific research processes; they are like insider jokes. Scientists will see themselves in these vignettes and laugh at their hubris.

I’m glad I have this work in electronic form on my Kindle. I have a feeling that I’ll enjoy revisiting these essays from time to time when I need something brief, clever, and whimsical to fill my time.

I heartily recommend this book to anyone with an inquisitive mind and an offbeat sense of humor.

[You might wonder how I know so much about the author. It is because I am in the process of researching and writing a report on his life and achievements for a class I’m taking on the book, “This Will Make You Smarter: New Scientific Concepts to Improve Your Thinking.” I recommend that book, too!]

[diovival · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

This is not a book meant to be rushed. Perhaps I will pick this up again one day and read an afterlife a day until I reach the end. Then I could give it the extra star it probably deserves. Or even better, I could lean over to a friend after each story and say, "What do you think about this ?"

[jnwelch_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

[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 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.

[lovinglit · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

What a find! I picked it up because of the cover (wow) and kept it because of the quote from Brian Eno on the cover saying how wonderfully original it is. It is a collection of forty short, and I mean short, stories. Stories are 2 or 3 pages long, more like extended statements really. Each one starts with something like "In the afterlife, you....." and goes on to elaborate on an idea about what happens when you are dead.

The stories are fantastical and in some cases seem to be inspired by drug-taking or being mentally ill- but in a good way! They mess with your head and get to approach things from some very odd angles. This book has a very "life is not what it seems" theme to it.

[jmoncton_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Sum is a collection of 40 essays about what the Afterlife might look like. For example, in his title story Sum, everyone gets a chance to relive their lives, except with a different order, where similar activities are grouped together. So, you would spend 10 years straight just sleeping, or 5 days brushing your teeth and WAY too many days browsing on goodreads (but it would be fun!). His essays are so quirky and refreshingly creative - definitely food for thought.

[nmele_4 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Imaginative, humorous, profound. Don't read this all in one sitting, read one or two of these short pieces at a time.

[hayduke_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Forty "what if" scenarios regarding the afterlife. These short tales are funny, quirky, and sure to spark your imagination. I immediately felt the urge to reread my favorites, and quote them to friends.

[ajbraithwaite_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Loved the inventiveness and humour in these vignettes, all looking at how an afterlife might work. The 'recreators' one where people's lives are reconstructed in the afterlife from their traces in the records they leave behind was particularly resonant for an archivist!

[alwright1_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This little collection is written in the second person, and it describes 40 afterlives in rapid succession. They are both thoughtful and whimsical, and it was a delight to see where you (I) would end up next. There were some great ideas, and some pleasing flights of fancy, and I really enjoyed it.

[chancemaree · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I absolutely loved reading this book. Ran through it like a glutton gobbling every story, giggling with delight. This is one book I'll buy hard copy and keep it lying around for occasional browsing. I'd like to dwell and investigate a few of the vignettes. I'm sure they've permeated my sub-conscious and will pop up in my own imaginings. Oh -- and yes, I highly recommend it to anyone willing to explore the possible options in the afterlife.

[kristi17_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Forty short stories (that read more like science fiction rather than anything religious or spiritual) that present alternative versions of what happens after we die. I didn't like all of the stories but the ones I liked (most of them) I really, really enjoyed. The most creative book I've read in while.

[jolleyg_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

The author gives us 40 different versions of what might happen after we die. Each one is a priceless gem that is worth meditating on. I could sense a grain of truth in each tale that illuminated the values we hold in life. I read each tale in sequence, but I would be glad to pick up this book from time to time and reread the tales at random.

[clfisha · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

40 perfectly formed stories, exuberantly exploring the "what if" of our afterlife’s. Each exceedingly short tale (2-3 pages) not only contains a gem of an idea and is beautifully written but manages to twist and turn in wonderfully surprising ways. Not just a cool premise but a brief exploration of it, of what this idea could really mean.

Written by neuroscientist David Eagleman to fit into his idea of "Possibilianism", straddled between fundamental atheism and religious belief.."with Possibilianism I'm hoping to define a new position — one that emphasizes the exploration of new,
unconsidered possibilities. Possibilianism is comfortable holding multiple ideas in mind; it is not interested in committing to any particular story"

You don’t have to care a jot for the reason behind the book, you can take joy in the stories. Only a strict fundamentalist could be offended, there are gods and a God, there are aliens, secret masters, robots and well just us.

It’s hard to pick a favourite but to give you a flavour (skip to the next paragraph if you want no idea spoilers) I loved the delicious view that in heaven God venerates Mary Shelley because he understands Dr Frankenstein and shuddered at the thought of an eternity where we live with all possible versions of us, so we always compare ourselves against the ones who did better & loathe the ones who failed.

Highly recommended to everyone, It is a joyful celebration of us and our imaginations and our ability to spin yarns.

[dalar_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I smiled throughout the book. Eagleman's Sum has the imagination and quirkiness of Neil Gaiman's works, the conciseness and insightfulness of The Little Prince, and philosophical dimensions comparable to a modern Voltaire. I highly recommend this for everyone.

[bragan_8 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Forty tiny glimpses of different afterlives, different gods, different ways for the mysteries of the universe to be arranged: An afterlife that's a dull suburb, or a battleground, or where you can meet your possible alternate selves or a you for every age you've ever been. A god who is an amateur tinkerer, or a married couple, or a being too vast to be aware of our microscopic existences or too microscopic to be aware of our vastness. A world that's a giant computer, or the place where godlike beings come on vacation, or nothing but one subatomic particle telling stories to itself.

Some of these are more original than others, more clever or thought-provoking or effective than others. Most of them don't hold up terribly well if you try to take them too literally. But all in all, it's a nifty collection of imaginative exercises, with a few brilliant little gems scattered through it.