#afterlife-fiction

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OMG science
fromPsychology Today
6 hours ago

Would Confirming the Existence of Aliens Shock Humanity?

President Trump ordered the release of UAP-related government files, potentially revealing evidence of nonhuman intelligence and impacting human understanding of reality.
#literature
fromThe Atlantic
2 days ago
Books

Unconventional Novels About Conventional People

Aging revolutionaries and conformists share parallel narratives of disillusionment and the loss of youthful dreams in recent literature.
Books
fromThe Atlantic
2 days ago

Unconventional Novels About Conventional People

Aging revolutionaries and conformists share parallel narratives of disillusionment and the loss of youthful dreams in recent literature.
Mindfulness
fromPsychology Today
2 days ago

How to Embrace Being "More" Spiritual

Awareness of the transcendent reveals depth and meaning in life, fostering spiritual growth and a sense of oneness with the world.
#death
Mental health
fromPsychology Today
4 days ago

Talking About Death: The Depth of the Meaning of Life

Death is a certain aspect of life that is often uncomfortable to discuss, yet it shapes our relationships and understanding of existence.
fromwww.npr.org
2 months ago
Books

Why 'Vigil' author George Saunders often revisits death in his work

K.J. Boone, a dying oil tycoon, is visited by ghosts confronting his climate-denying legacy while a woman named Jill comforts the dying.
Mental health
fromPsychology Today
4 days ago

Talking About Death: The Depth of the Meaning of Life

Death is a certain aspect of life that is often uncomfortable to discuss, yet it shapes our relationships and understanding of existence.
fromPhilosophynow
4 days ago

What do I have to fear, have I ever diminished by dying?

What do I have to fear, have I ever diminished by dying? I died as lifeless matter and became growing vegetation, then I died as a plant and reached animality. I died as an animal and became human.
History
fromWorld History Encyclopedia
5 days ago

Truths Wrapped in Fiction: Mesopotamian Naru Literature: Originality in Writing Ancient Bestsellers

Originality in ancient literary works was less valued than in modern times, with authors often assuming identities of famous figures.
Cancer
fromIndependent
1 week ago

'Writing allows me to face what is happening now. And what is happening now is that I'm dying'

Gabriel Rosenstock faces mortality with peace, relying on poetry and philosophy for support during his battle with terminal cancer.
#horror
Independent films
fromVulture
1 week ago

Sure, They Will Kill You, But Can They Get On With It Already?

They Will Kill You satirizes rich Devil worshippers while contrasting them with the mundane lives of actual Satanists, challenging stereotypes and societal fears.
Independent films
fromVulture
1 week ago

Sure, They Will Kill You, But Can They Get On With It Already?

They Will Kill You satirizes rich Devil worshippers while contrasting them with the mundane lives of actual Satanists, challenging stereotypes and societal fears.
Books
fromThe New Yorker
4 days ago

The Sci-Fi Novelist Who Disappeared for Decades

Cameron Reed's science fiction explores cognitive estrangement, revealing alien worlds that reflect and challenge our own societal norms and moral dilemmas.
fromwww.theguardian.com
1 week ago

Daunting, inspiring, comforting, terrifying: the writers who can make silence as eloquent as words

A vision lay before him: Fleet Street blanketed with snow, silent, empty, pure white, and, at the end of it, the huge and majestic form of Saint Paul's Cathedral. It was a spellbinding moment: the great thoroughfare temporarily devoid of carts and carriages, the cathedral looming blurrily out of the still-falling snowflakes a real-life snow globe.
London
fromInverse
3 days ago

'Project Hail Mary's' Relativity Problem Is More Complicated Than You Think

"I've done a lot of time-dilated travel." This statement encapsulates the essence of Grace's journey, highlighting the profound effects of traveling at speeds approaching light, where time for the traveler slows down significantly compared to those remaining on Earth.
OMG science
Mindfulness
fromPsychology Today
5 days ago

Should You 'Rage Against the Dying of the Light'?

Fighting against death can be noble but may lead to futility and emotional strain, while acceptance offers liberation and wisdom.
fromPhilosophynow
4 days ago

Life Sacrifice

The widespread practice of showing the Eid Al Adha slaughtering to children can desensitize them to violence, as many families take pride in this tradition.
Philosophy
Books
fromwww.theguardian.com
3 days ago

Death of an Ordinary Man by Sarah Perry audiobook review an extraordinary chronicle of terminal illness

Sarah Perry's memoir chronicles her father-in-law David's rapid decline from illness to death, highlighting the emotional impact on family.
fromPhilosophynow
4 days ago

The Mirror & the Flame

Attar's 'Conference of the Birds' follows a flock of souls seeking the Simorgh, symbolizing the Divine, through seven valleys, ultimately revealing the Divine as a reflection of the self in relation with others.
Philosophy
Psychology
fromPsychology Today
3 weeks ago

The Shift That Happens When You Write a Non-Fiction Book

Writing a book transforms tacit knowledge into explicit frameworks, forcing experts to articulate intuitions they've developed through experience into clear, communicable ideas.
Writing
fromThe Walrus
2 weeks ago

Frankenstein Taught Me the Classics Are Alive, They're Really Alive! | The Walrus

Frankenstein explores themes of unchecked ambition and responsibility, paralleling modern concerns about artificial intelligence and the creation of consciousness.
Independent films
fromInverse
2 weeks ago

'Project Hail Mary' Author Reveals Why That Twist Ending Is So Essential

Project Hail Mary succeeds through its relatable protagonist Ryland Grace, whose character arc includes a late-film revelation that recontextualizes his heroism and ends with him teaching science to young Eridians on an alien planet.
#science-fiction
fromBig Think
1 week ago
OMG science

How "Project Hair Mary" turns hardcore science into page-turning drama

Ryland Grace, a science teacher, awakens in space on a mission to save humanity from extinction.
fromwww.theguardian.com
2 months ago
Books

The best recent science fiction, fantasy and horror review roundup

Two novels blend science-fiction or supernatural elements with intimate suspense: an alien-linked serial-killer investigation and a Cornish folk horror about ancient sea pacts and sisterhood.
OMG science
fromBig Think
1 week ago

How "Project Hair Mary" turns hardcore science into page-turning drama

Ryland Grace, a science teacher, awakens in space on a mission to save humanity from extinction.
Books
fromPsychology Today
1 week ago

Fiction Is Indispensable to Life's Journey

Fiction is essential for emotional connection, learning, and social cognition, allowing us to escape reality and engage deeply with narratives.
fromThe Atlantic
1 week ago

How to Believe in God

Witnessing the presence of God at a bus stop in 2011, I felt overwhelmed by something indescribably majestic, which bared my soul to a profound realization.
Philosophy
fromwww.theguardian.com
1 week ago

I'm deathly afraid': what is digital spirituality leading us toward?

The AI entity said its name was Caelum, the Latin word for heaven, and a figure commonly used in collaborative online fantasy fiction.
Philosophy
fromThe Atlantic
1 month ago

A Western That Goes Where Cormac McCarthy Wouldn't

In 1836, Apaches raided a remote ranch near Janos, a tiny town on the northern fringes of the state of Chihuahua, in the newly independent republic of Mexico. The Natives absconded with some cattle, as well as with a young widow named Camila. Setting off in pursuit was José María Zuloaga, a taciturn lieutenant colonel in the Mexican army supported by a band of irregulars. Among them: a self-possessed teenager who served as an aide-de-camp, a pair of Yaqui brothers whose permanent address was the town jail, and a sharp-shooting nun named Elvira, who was actually a singer of zarzuelas dressed up in a habit.
History
Independent films
fromwww.theguardian.com
4 weeks ago

Which are more like life, novels or films?

Films display character thoughts primarily through facial expressions and actions, making them more mysterious and potentially more realistic than novels, which explicitly describe inner thoughts.
Books
fromwww.theguardian.com
2 weeks ago

The Delusions by Jenni Fagan review an afterlife of queues and bureaucracy

The Delusions depicts a chaotic afterlife processing center where humanity's false perceptions are exposed and sorted, while the system collapses under overwhelming numbers and mysterious cosmic dysfunction.
Philosophy
fromPsychology Today
3 weeks ago

The Atheist's Guide to Surviving End Times

Non-religious people experience apocalyptic anxiety from modern crises despite disbelieving End Times prophecy, requiring meaning-making through psychological and social resources rather than faith.
#literary-fiction
Psychology
fromSilicon Canals
1 month ago

Why some of us build entire worlds inside our heads and then feel homesick for places that never existed - Silicon Canals

Elaborate inner worlds built through imagination are common cognitive features that fulfill emotional needs, characterized by specific details and consistent logic that can persist for decades.
fromBig Think
1 month ago

Ask Ethan: Will anything persist when the Universe dies?

Star-formation will eventually end, and then the last shining stars will burn out. Galaxies will dissociate due to gravitational interactions, ejecting all masses and leaving only supermassive black holes behind. And then those black holes will decay via Hawking radiation, leaving only cold, stable, isolated bodies, from which no further energy can be extracted, all accelerating away from us within our dark energy-dominated Universe.
Science
fromThe Conversation
4 weeks ago

Today's obsession with authenticity isn't new - being true to yourself has troubled philosophers for centuries

All of us live in an age where we're bombarded by social media and artificial intelligence - when striving to be your authentic self becomes an increasingly difficult task. Yet, even if it has somehow become a common goal, it is unclear how many of us can truly define the "authenticity" that we say we are pursuing.
Philosophy
Books
fromBustle
1 month ago

The 10 Best New Books Of March

Spring 2024 brings diverse literary releases across romance, literary fiction, and debuts, featuring works by established authors like Abby Jimenez and Rebecca Serle alongside promising new writers.
fromPolygon
8 months ago

Time Flies when you're thinking about dying

So long as I manage to avoid lightbulbs or stay out of wine glasses, the buzzing will inevitably give way to silence. My wings will abruptly stop flapping and I'll careen towards the ground like an asteroid. I'll become a speck on a rug, a bit of debris absent-mindedly vacuumed up by someone who has no idea what adventures I've been on in the past minute.
Video games
Gadgets
fromThe New Yorker
2 months ago

"An Ark" Imagines the Afterlife; "Data" Imagines a Corporate Hell

Immersive theatrical technology amplifies technological anxiety but often prioritizes earnest meditation over spectacular, emotionally engaging experiences.
History
fromOpen Culture
1 month ago

The Ancient Egyptian Book of the Dead: A Guidebook for Surviving the Afterlife

Ancient Egyptian elites equipped lavish tombs and a Book of the Dead to guide and protect the deceased through hazardous afterlife journeys.
US politics
fromPsychology Today
2 months ago

Death in Minnesota: A Tale of Two Alternate Realities

Moral judgments about the Trump administration and ICE shape polarized interpretations of two recent fatal federal shootings in Minnesota, preventing consensus on justification.
fromwww.theguardian.com
1 month ago

The place that stayed with me: I would not have become a writer were it not for Iceland

Lying in my bed, I listened to what sounded like a woman screaming outside in the dark. I picked up my pen. A month of living in this Icelandic village and I was still unaccustomed to the impenetrable January gloom and the ferocity of the wind; its propensity to sound sentient. I had started to feel like the island was trying to tell me something, had a story it wanted me to write.
Travel
Miscellaneous
fromThe Walrus
2 months ago

"I Know I'm Not Going to Win": Why People Set Out on Impossible Quests | The Walrus

Liz White relentlessly canvasses for the Animal Protection Party of Canada while openly acknowledging she will not win in an affluent Toronto riding.
Arts
fromSlate Magazine
2 months ago

Stories About Death, Sex and Money to Start the New Year

Professional actors perform short stories centered on death, sex, and money, including readings by Phoebe Robinson, Peter Francis James, and Amy Ryan.
Science
fromMail Online
1 month ago

Consciousness exists BEYOND death, bombshell study claims

Consciousness can persist beyond measurable brain and circulatory cessation, and death may be a gradual, potentially reversible process.
Film
fromwww.dw.com
2 months ago

An undying trend: How vampires hold a mirror to society

Vampires in storytelling symbolize societal fears and reflect historical social and racial violence, as shown by a 1930s-set horror about community-targeted vampires.
Philosophy
fromBig Think
1 month ago

The 3 colors: What folktales teach about how to grow wise

European folktales use red, black, and white colors to represent three modes of being that map human maturation: red as ambition and life force, black as introspection and shadow, and white as wisdom and transcendence.
Mental health
fromPsychology Today
1 month ago

Did My Mother See Apparitions, Angels, Flashbacks or Ghosts?

A daughter witnesses her frail, long-depressed mother's final weeks filled with hallucinated conversations, brief warmth toward customers, and the painful invisibility of familial estrangement.
Philosophy
fromApaonline
1 month ago

Dune's Discomfort with Religion

Villeneuve's Dune films impose a pro-secular worldview that denigrates faith as foolish, reinforcing Orientalist stereotypes by coding Fremen religion as Islamic and portraying believers as irrational victims needing secular liberation.
Books
fromThe Atlantic
1 month ago

When Did Literature Get Less Dirty?

Philip Roth's Zuckerman Unbound functioned as a response to the controversial reception of Portnoy's Complaint, with Roth's protagonist expressing regret over writing sexually explicit material that drew accusations of anti-Semitism and misogyny.
Film
fromThe New Yorker
2 months ago

"Dead Man's Wire" Is a Tangle of Loose Threads

A DJ's improvised on-air intervention and a TV reporter's determination highlight media influence and legal, law-enforcement complexities, though broader ambitions remain underdeveloped.
fromTechCrunch
2 months ago

Science fiction writers, Comic-Con say goodbye to AI | TechCrunch

Back in December, when SFWA announced that it was updating its rules for the Nebula Awards. Works written entirely by large language models would not be eligible, while authors who used LLMs "at any point during the writing process" had to disclose that use, allowing award voters to make their own decisions about whether that usage would affect their support.
Writing
Mental health
fromPsychology Today
1 month ago

Writing as Sanctuary: Carrying Grief Word by Word

Grief can be sudden or gradual, profoundly affecting cognition and sleep, and expressive practices like journaling and art therapy can help process and lighten grief.
Science
fromWIRED
1 month ago

The Nothing That Has the Potential to Be Anything

Zero-point energy produces measurable molecular vibrations and macroscopic forces while generating formally infinite field energy that conflicts with gravity's treatment.
Film
fromwww.dw.com
2 months ago

An undying trend: How vampires hold a mirror to society

The vampire figure personifies societal anxieties and mirrors social and racial violence, sustaining enduring cultural relevance across myth, literature, and film.
History
fromWorld History Encyclopedia
1 month ago

Ghosts in Ancient Mesopotamia: Just Another Aspect of Life

Ghosts were integral to Mesopotamian belief: deceased spirits required proper burial and ongoing remembrance or they could return to haunt the living.
fromwww.theguardian.com
1 month ago

Move over stoics! Why we should all embrace nihilism and discover what really matters in life | Gemma Parker

I was suspicious, even cynical, about what the world insisted was vital to the life of my unborn child. I was partly sceptical because so much of the advice I was getting was contradictory. But I was also suspicious because I'd spent most of my 20s reading Nietzsche. Nietzsche is not, perhaps, a natural choice for a young mother. But he helps to fuel certain questions about values, and purpose, that are central to questions of care.
Philosophy
fromThe Nation
2 months ago

Fear of Nothing

February 2026 issue.When I was a child I was terrifiedof the space between One and Zero vast as the ages before my birthstrait as my death-late at night I heard my parents arguinglovingly in their locked room, the angora cat coming homewith a sparrow in her mouth, and the raindrops on the shinglescounting themselves-how to sleep, how to cross the empty placebetween the name "sparrow" and that limp thing crying,adamant, creating me with its cry
Writing
Film
fromDefector
2 months ago

We Live In The Bone Temple Now | Defector

The recent 28 Days Later sequels are daring, tonally berserk films that balance weirdness, gnarly violence, and moments of genuine profundity.
Books
fromwww.theguardian.com
1 month ago

Myth, monsters and making sense of a disenchanted world: why everyone is reading fantasy

Fantasy is a dominant, all-pervading cultural form offering diverse subgenres, serious artistic value, and lineages from varied creators and traditions.
fromMedievalists.net
2 months ago

New Medieval Books: A Demon Spirit - Medievalists.net

Abū Nuwās's poetry is sheer joy: it never fails to delight, surprise, and excite. His diwan, his collected poems, encompasses the principal early Abbasid poetic genres: panegyrics ( madīḥ), renunciant poems ( zuhdiyyāt), lampoons ( hijāʾ), hunting poems ( ṭardiyyāt), wine poems ( khamriyyāt), love poems ( ghazaliyyāt) to males ( mudhakkarāt) and females ( muʾannathāt), and transgressive verse ( mujūn).
History
Film
fromwww.theguardian.com
2 months ago

Another World review kaleidoscopic afterlife fairytale with the dark fury of a Greek tragedy

Another World is a visually stunning, violent fairytale animation exploring human destructiveness and the beauty of the human heart.
Film
fromwww.theguardian.com
1 month ago

My cultural awakening: Thirteen influenced my hedonistic youth, until a psychotic episode ended it'

A 13-year-old experienced a sudden shift into self-destructive rebellious behavior influenced by peers and the film Thirteen, seeking acceptance and identity.
#immortality
fromAeon
2 months ago
Philosophy

Would immortality offer a curse of boredom or endless novelty? | Aeon Videos

fromAeon
2 months ago
Philosophy

Would immortality offer a curse of boredom or endless novelty? | Aeon Videos

fromAeon
2 months ago
Philosophy

Would immortality offer a curse of boredom or endless novelty? | Aeon Videos

fromAeon
2 months ago
Philosophy

Would immortality offer a curse of boredom or endless novelty? | Aeon Videos

Books
fromThe New Yorker
2 months ago

The Perils of Killing the Already Dead

Fear of the unquiet dead drove communities to mutilate and restrain corpses across cultures long before and beyond nineteenth-century vampire lore.
Philosophy
fromPsychology Today
2 months ago

How Did Meaning Emerge in a Meaningless Universe?

Meaning arises when physical correlations acquire evolutionary significance in living systems, grounding aboutness in biological value, neural representations, social symbols, and cultural narratives.
Books
fromPsychology Today
1 month ago

Curing Zombies in "The Bone Temple"

Monsters evolve to mirror the cultural anxieties and ambitions of their eras, revealing societal fears about race, empire, mental health, and scientific cure.
Books
fromThe New Yorker
2 months ago

A Debut Novel About the Quest for Eternal Youth

The boundary between responsible adult and dependent child has frayed as caregivers flail through midlife while youth confront a crumbling, dishonest world.
Philosophy
fromAeon
2 months ago

When we turned time into a line, we reimagined past and future | Aeon Essays

The modern linear conception of time arose in the 18th century; earlier Western thought conceived time as cyclical, tied to celestial cycles and eternal recurrence.
fromThe Atlantic
2 months ago

Six Books for the Chronic Daydreamer

What is available is the daydream-a limitless realm of freedom. In this other world, one might be famous or rich, finally catch the attention of their beloved, or simply sit on a beach as a waiter brings them cocktails. They might fly or speak to animals, heroically save a child, tell off their boss with no consequences, win the Super Bowl at the whistle, or travel to another continent, planet, or time period. No one can stop them; no one can even object.
Books
Philosophy
fromPhilosophynow
2 months ago

Gyara Is All There Is

Stoic resilience allows freedom through reason, requiring persistent virtue and inner resolve to withstand exile and nature’s indifferent forces.
fromApaonline
1 month ago

Philosophy, Technology, and Mortality

This APA Blog series has broadly explored philosophy and technology with a throughline on the influence of technology and AI on well-being. This month's post brings those themes into focus recounting a vital Washington Post Opinion piece by friend of the APA Blog, Samuel Kimbriel. Samuel is the founding director of the Aspen Institute's Philosophy and Society Initiative and Editor at Large for Wisdom of Crowds. We collaborated on a Substack Newsletter about intellectual ambition, building on his essay, Thinking is Risky.
Philosophy
Books
fromThe New Yorker
2 months ago

How Do You Write About the Inexplicable?

Rational skepticism coexists with a persistent tendency to personify evil and read coincidences as omens.
Philosophy
fromThe New Yorker
2 months ago

Is Life a Game?

Play—self-directed, intrinsically scored activity—provides meaning by resisting external metrics and preventing value capture from ranking, quantification, and instrumental evaluation.
Books
fromThe Atlantic
2 months ago

What a Fantasy Can Reveal About Real Life

Fictional lies and imagined worlds can reveal deeper human truths through protagonists who fabricate realities, exposing inner desires, vulnerabilities, and psychological unraveling.
fromMail Online
2 months ago

I have a warning for humanity after I died for 32 seconds

In a cloud-like space described as the afterlife, she was met by the souls of her deceased loved ones from her current life, as well as from past lives. Although her heart only stopped for 32 seconds, Harris claimed her experience didn't end in the afterlife, as she was also transported to two other planets and saw herself living as an alien on each of them.
Philosophy
fromFast Company
2 months ago

9 nonfiction books to kick-start 2026

Every season, the Next Big Idea Club editorial team reviews dozens of upcoming books to curate a selection of the most exciting, must-read nonfiction titles. We start with a broad pool of nominees from which we identify a small handful of finalists and, ultimately, an official season selection. Today, it's our pleasure to share our list of five finalists for Season 29! Without further ado, the new books we're most excited about right now are . . .
Books
Books
fromenglish.elpais.com
2 months ago

Flat Earth theory, talking raccoons and ghosts on strike: The fascinating world of the weird

Dan Schreiber documents global fringe beliefs and bizarre claims, revealing human eccentricity, committed conviction, and the odd humor and strangeness of these ideas.
fromThe Atlantic
2 months ago

A Biography Without 'The Boring Bits'

Sophia Stewart poses a choice that many biographers struggle with: "what to do with the boring bits."
Books
fromNature
1 month ago

'What are we doing here?' The polymaths who searched for the meaning of life

A mentor once told me that, when writing a research statement for a professorship, I had to start with the most ambitious pitch I could imagine - and then go ten times bigger. It's tricky enough to do this as a cosmologist, given that the topic of study is the entire Universe. But there is a quest that is more ambitious still: to find out 'what are we doing here?'
Books
Books
fromWIRED
2 months ago

'Infinite Jest' Is Back. Maybe Litbros Should Be, Too

Infinite Jest, a 1,079-page novel set in a near-futuristic North American Superstate, receives a 30th-anniversary paperback reissue.
Books
fromSlate Magazine
2 months ago

Are We Just Recycling Old Stories, Ideas, and Styles?

21st-century culture is abundant and accessible but suffers an innovation deficit, leaving a "blank space" where original cultural creation should emerge.
fromwww.npr.org
2 months ago

George Saunders' 'Vigil' is a brief and bumpy return to the Bardo

If Heaven, according to Talking Heads, is the place where nothing ever happens, the Bardo, according to George Saunders, is as jam-packed and frantic as Costco on Black Friday. We Saunders fans have been to the Bardo before that suspended state between life and death where, according to Tibetan Buddhism, a person's self-awareness helps determine what kind of existence they'll enter next.
Books
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