Reviews & Overviews by Rod Cameron
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Connie Willis has written a number of books in a variety of genres, notably her excellent Doomsday Book which won several awards, in which the time travelling heroine is trapped in fourteenth century England during the Black Death. Passage is something quite different. It is about NDEs (Near Death Experiences). Joanne Lander is a researcher at a hospital who specialises in NDEs and how the brain fabricates the visions – tunnels of white light, etc on the point of death. She interviews patients who are dying and have experienced NDEs looking for commonality in their visions. When she meets another researcher who can stimulate NDEs chemically, after initial reluctance, she enters into a series of her own NDEs. On the face of it, this could be a very depressing book however it does contain a lot of gentle humour. The story becomes particularly interesting when a number of visions from different subjects appear to concern doomed and sinking ships such as the Titanic and the Carpathia. It is a topic that like it or not we will experience at first hand at some time or another, and I found it very interesting and surprisingly enjoyable. Look out for it, and for Doomsday Book for that matter. Yet another book that was on the SF shelves when it came out a few years ago. It could well have been put on a number of other shelves. It is certainly a topic that is not the exclusive domain of SF & Horror. |
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