death and immortality

• science fiction
• science fact
• remarks

science fiction readings

• Philip K. Dick
  • The Unteleported Man
  • Eye in the Sky
  • The Martian Time-Slip
  • Time out of Joint
  • Ubik [huh?]
  • The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch
• Greg Egan
• Axiomatic
• Wang's Carpets
• Permutation City
• Distress
• Victor Pelevin
• News from Nepal

[read a review in the NYT]

• Connie Willis
• Passage

I will remember it forever,
the darkness and the cold.


- Edith Harman, a Titanic survivor

"What is it like down there, Charides?"
"Very dark."
"And what of return?"
"All lies."


- Callimachus

[from the frontispiece of Passage]

science fact readings

1. A popular account of the Lancet Study on NDEs (from the website of the International Association for Near-Death Studies)
2. The articles from the Lancet:
   1. *Near-death experience in survivors of cardiac arrest: a prospective study in the Netherlands, P. van Lommel, Lancet 358:2039-2045 (2001)
   2. *Dying to know the truth: visions of a dying brain, or false memories?, C. C. French, Lancet 358:2010-2011 (2001) [a commentary on van Lommel]
   3. *Dissociation in people who have near-death experiences: out of their bodies or out of their minds?, B. Greyson, Lancet 355:460-463 (2000)
   4. *Science, faith, and gods, D. Sharp, Lancet 359:806-807 (2002)
3. *What geometric visual hallucinations tell us about the visual cortex, P. C. Bressloff, J. D. Cowan, M. Golubitsky, P. J. Thomas, and M. Wiener, Neural Computation 14:473-491 (2002) [abstract]

remarks

• meeting 1: Dick's Ubik; articles (a),(b) from the Lancet (Mar 31)
• meeting 2: Willis's Passage; articles (c),(d) from the Lancet (Apr 7)