YOU in the afterlife

I first saw "Sum" at Barnes & Noble one day, sitting on the new paperback wall. I read a page, found myself intrigued, and promptly forgot the book existed. Then I saw it again about a month ago at a thrift store near my apartment, and borrowed $2 from a friend to purchase the collection of "tales from the afterlives." Each of the 40 nugget stories is fiction, written by a neuroscientist named David Eagleman. A scientist writes fiction? This you have to see.

It took about two days to read this book, and I loved how quick it was. Basically, Mr./Dr. Eagleman thought up 40 different scenarios that we might come upon in the afterlife, some more plausible than others, some include God but some do not, and some include odd versions of God. Some include aliens. Some include different versions of yourself -- you at different phases of life, you being all the things you could have been but chose not to be, you as an actor on the stage of someone else's life, you with greater intelligence than your creator(s). And they all make some comment on the state of life. Individual life, universal life, cellular life. Most sound pretty dreadful, but the point is to make you appreciate more fully what you choose to do with your life on Earth.

"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." In this afterlife, you experience similar events consecutively, which is supposed to help you appreciate the randomness of real life, but on a microscopic level. As though you could say: "Hooray! I don't have to cut my fingernails every single day! I'm so looking forward to that next joyful cutting session." But the scenario doesn't acknowledge that you can still be bored with life in general. That's for another story -- the one in which Earth is populated only by people you met during your life. Of course, you end up lonely because the joy of life comes from *new* experiences.

A few of the stories include gods that are weepy and regretful, as though they blame themselves for the mess of humanity. When God isn't mentioned, there is usually some sort of Technician, Collector or Caller that serves as a crossing guard at the intersection of Now and Later. Eagleman makes playful metaphors about immortality and relationships. Self-realization and empathy are major themes, but (happily) religion is not. It's an exercise in creativity for both author and reader -- it's almost a challenge to stretch your imagination to places most people don't think much about. It reads like a Choose Your Own Adventure novel, where "you" are the main character, and you have to decide your next step. But this book wants you to take that step literally. You're heading down Now, will you make a right or a left onto Later? He's not saying you need GPS navigation, but maybe you shouldn't just wing it. Just in case.