Product Description

In the afterlife you may find that God is the size of a microbe and unaware of your existence. Or you may find the afterlife contains only those people whom you remember. In some afterlives you are split into all your different ages, in some you are recreated based on your credit card records, and in others you are forced to live with annoying versions of yourself that represent what you could have been. In these wonderfully imagined tales - at once funny, wistful and unsettling - Eagleman kicks over the chessboard of traditional notions and offers us a dazzling lens through which to see ourselves here and now. His stories are rooted in science and romance and awe at our mysterious existence: a mixture of hope, love and death that cuts through human nature at innovative angles.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #645 in Books
• Published on: 2009-04-24
• Binding: Paperback
• 128 pages

Review
Witty, bright, sharp and unexpected...As surprising a book as I've read for years. --Brian Eno

Review
Sum is terrific... The inventiveness, the clarity and wit of the prose...add up to something completely original.

Review
Sum is an imaginative and provocative book.

Customer Reviews

A little gem.
This stunning little volume stands on its own. There is nothing else to compare it to. When you read these surprising, amusing, quirky and profund stories, they start to shine in your mind like diamonds. They bring a new light on things, that you might not have notice before. All stories are about the 'Afterlife' and what we can expect there, or also on what is going on in the 'Afterlife'. Incredibly funny, clever and absolutely always disconcerting, they are more than food for thought. They are NEW food for thought that no one before put into words !!!
For a few pounds, don't deny yourself this genuine treat for the mind.

this is a wise and unexpected and beautifully written gem of a book
This gorgeously produced, wee sliver of a book packs an enormous punch. 40 short explorations, or imaginings, of what might await us when we die, Sum manages to be silly and serious at the same time. Each of these finely crafted tales of the afterlife sends you down a different tunnel of thought and each one provokes you into viewing life with fresh.

It's one of the wildest and most unexpected books I have come across in years. It's no surprise that both Brian Eno and Philip Pullman are big fans. They seem to have a habit of championing the unexpected and worthwhile. I just wish I was in the audience at the Sydney Opera House at the beginning of June when Eno will be setting 12 of Eagelman's Sums to music - live readings mixed with Eno's journeys into sound and space.

Should be brilliant and hopefully will come to Britain in the Autumn!!

But regardless - check out this book. It's something very special

A magnificent conceit
Every writer manqué is probably thinking "Doh! Why didn't I think of this!" because in retrospect, like all the best ideas, it seems like a wonderful construct for writing a series of short stories.

But we didn't think of it, David Eagleman did, and more power to his elbow for doing so.

As other reviewers have written, this is a very thought provoking set of alternate afterlives that have been imagined here. So much so, that while I suspect that the healthiest way to approach this book would be like a box of chocolates, showing restraint and only consuming one every now and again by way of a treat, in reality I devoured the whole lot in just a couple of sittings. That's a tribute to both the style and the content.

Finally, I defy anyone reading the story "Encore" not to shiver just a little, not least because statistically speaking the universe depicted there is actually quite plausible, indeed quite likely (cf. Nick Bostrom's meaningful musings).