Hello again!
Almost ten months ago, I started this blog project, claiming that I’d update it on Tuesdays and Saturdays. Obviously, my self-imposed deadline whooshed past a long time ago. I do intend to continue this project, but without the regular schedule. Therefore, the best thing to do if you want to read along (or follow along) is to subscribe.
The book that revivified this project is, appropriately enough, about life after death.
Today’s sentence comes out of Sum: Tales From the Afterlives by David Eagleman (Pantheon, 2009):
Love was not specified in the design of your brain; it is merely an endearing algorithm that freeloads on the leftover processing cycles.
First, I chose this because it was, to me, a particularly endearing aphorism, and one that encapsulated what this book is about. If you haven’t read it (and chances are, you haven’t), Sum is a short-story collection that shows the reader forty different afterlives, some entries being slightly modulated from others, some being wildly different.
Why did I connect with this book so much? It encapsulates perfectly what speculative fiction is all about; the novel starts with “What if?” and proceeds to answer the question in forty different ways. The remarkable thing about it is that they never got dull. The stories are smart, aphoristic, and filled with a sense of cosmic whimsy. Despite being aphoristic, the language is mostly fresh.
The best analogy I can draw here is to a piece of music; Sum is the literary equivalent to Claude Debussy’s “Arabesque No. 1,” something you expect to be short and slight and ends up being much more moving than you ever imagined. Hopefully that’s not too obscure for this crowd.
So if you’ve not yet read Sum, do yourself a favor and buy the book. If you’re a writer, you might also find it a catalyst; it certainly revved up my neural networks. When you’re done, feel free to add your take to the comments. If you have a favorite afterlife, it would be cool to hear about.
You’ll find this in the general fiction section of your local bookstore.
Filed under: 100 Sentences, Writing Tagged: | afterlife, afterlives, books, culture, david eagleman, fantasy, fiction, literature, neuroscience, philosophy, procrastination, sci-fi, science fiction, thought experiment, what if
