[2] Sawyer received a writer's reserve grant from the Ontario Arts Council in 1993 in support of his writing the novel.

He has always been haunted by memories of monitoring an EKG during the dissection of a "corpse" for organ donation when he was in graduate school; the donor's heart was still beating and the body exhibited signs of anesthesia awareness.

"[4] Peter is hurt and angry when his beloved wife, Cathy, admits that she had sex with Hans Larsen, whom neither of them respects.

To his shock, when Peter places his superEEG on the head of a willing terminal patient, he afterwards finds in the readouts a small electrical field leaving the brain after death.

He shares this discovery with his friend Sarkar Muhammed, who runs his own startup firm doing expert system design.

When Peter holds a press conference to announce his breakthrough, human society around the world undergoes a revolution.

Whether that field lasts for any appreciable time after departure, or whether it carries any real information, is completely unknown—and any other interpretation at this point is just wishful thinking.

From one, they seek "which neural nets are activated exclusively by biological concerns, and then zero those out" (p. 131), so that it is purely intellect; they call it Spirit.

The pace is good, keeping you turning the pages, and the characters are likeable, even the libidinous Hans and the un-enlightened Rod.