Every time a person dies, writes Grossman in Life and Fate, the entire world that has been built in that individual’s consciousness dies as well: “The stars have disappeared from the night sky; the Milky Way has vanished; the sun has gone out . . . flowers have lost their colour and fragrance; bread has vanished; water has vanished.” Elsewhere in the book, he writes that one day we may engineer a machine that can have humanlike experiences; but if we do, it will have to be enormous—so vast is this space of consciousness, even within the most “average, inconspicuous human being.”
