"SUM" is a dazzling exploration of funny and unexpected afterlives that have never been considered-each presented as a vignette that offers us a stunning lens through which to see ourselves here and now. 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 God is a married couple struggling with discontent, or that the afterlife contains only those 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. David Eagleman proposes many versions of our purpose here; 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 wonderfully imagined tale-at once funny, wistful, and unsettling-are rooted in science and romance and awe at our mysterious existence: a mixture of death, hope, computers, immortality, love, biology, and desire that exposes radiant new facets of our humanity.

◎全書搭配插畫家伊卡魯斯精心繪製的四十種死後生活面貌 ◎全書由知名設計家王志弘親手操刀設計 ◎《死後四十種生活》是一本適合隨身攜帶、隨時閱讀的小說 了解生命祕密的終極奇想── 四十種不可思議的死後世界 字宙間另一層生命的存在意義，即在消失後的生命依然擁有無限的可能性！ 在死後世界中，上帝如微生物般大小，所以無法察覺我們的存在。在另一種死後世界中，造物者是愚蠢的生物，祂創造人類是為了弄清楚自己能力不及之處。或者上帝如同《科學怪人》裡的法蘭克斯坦，製作出祂心馳神往的巔峰之作後，卻只想逃離其所創造的東西。又或者，在死後世界裡，上帝根本不存在。 我們到了死後世界，所有的事情會再重新發生，只是倒退著進行；或許順序全數重組，相同的事情聚集在一起，一次做個夠；或者我們可以同時享受所有可能，平行過著多重的生活；或者在死後世界裡，我們可以選擇下輩子要投胎轉化的物種。 我們只是別人夢境中的背景人物；我們會分裂成不同年紀時的自我；我們是宇宙地圖製作師所使用的活動機器人；我們是分裂原子聯盟再結合後的產物；我們是諸神想了解兩人之所以能在一起成為對偶的實驗對象；我們是上帝的癌細胞。 這是一本由四十篇獨立故事集結而成的小說。每篇故事提供不同的理由來解釋我們的存在和生死的意義。神經科學家大衛．伊葛門想像出來的精彩故事，趣味、慧黠，但也同時讓人惴惴不安，透過這些諷刺挖苦卻引人深省的觀點，我們得以從全新的角度來觀看自己的生命。