SUM shows us forty wonderfully imagined possibilities of life beyond
death. In one afterlife you may find that God is the size of a microbe
and is unaware of your existence. In another, your creators are a
species of dim-witted creatures who built us to figure out what they
could not. In a different version of the afterlife you work as a
background character in other people's dreams. Or you may find that the
afterlife contains only people whom you remember, or that the hereafter
includes the thousands of previous gods who no longer attract followers.
In some afterlives you are split into your different ages; in some you
are forced to live with annoying versions of yourself that represent
what you could have been; in others you are re-created from your credit
card records and Internet history. Many versions of our purpose here are
proposed; we are mobile robots for cosmic mapmakers, we are reunions for
a scattered confederacy of atoms, we are experimental subjects for gods
trying to understand what makes couples stick together. These tales--at
once witty, wistful and unsettling--are rooted in science and romance
and awe at our mysterious existence while asking the key questions about
death, hope, technology, immortality, love, biology and desire that
expose radiant new facets of our humanity.
