true stories · 2009-11-13 23:32
Russell’s write up of True Stories Told Live brought to mind a few things said at the David Eagleman and Philip Pullman reading/chat at the QEH – Eagleman’s Sum is the atheist/agnostic/Fortean/possibilian/Eno-approved book du jour; 40 tiny, short stories or vignettes of a very few possibilities of what happens after we die (by-the-by, one that didn’t make the cut was about cities being sentient, but with no input/output mechanisms for us to understand them). As Pullman said, they’re not really stories, they’re actually scenarios, a setting in which things could happen. Being questioned about being an atheist but including an afterlife in his books, Pullman noted that the harpies wanted true stories – if you had one, you could die in peace; and, for atheists that have no predestination in life to hold on to, this is what you strive for – to have a true story to tell, an interesting, lived life.