NDE

Although the Smallville TV series presents a new version of Superman's youth, it can be expected that its background details will broadly correspond to those of the DC Universe depicted in DC Comics. That fictitious universe comprises some stories that are science fiction, like Superman's extraterrestrial origin, and others that are fantasy, including accounts of a hereafter. In fact, Superman returned from his "Death" twenty years ago because his foster father, during a Near Death Experience, met the already dead Clark and persuaded him to return.

The third novel in Smallville Omnibus 1 (New York, 2006) is Hauntings by Nancy Holder which I will have to reread but, as far as I can remember, it does involve real ghosts. In the pilot episode of the Smallville TV series, Lex Luthor asks Clark Kent whether he believes that a man can fly and then describes his own Near Death Experience, soaring over Smallville.

In the light of all this, it makes sense that Alan Grant writes Pete Ross' NDE into Dragons, the second novel in the first omnibus. Passing through the hospital roof but able to look down and through it, Pete sees his family and friends in the waiting room. We had already been told that they were there. Next Pete sees and enters the tunnel of light with, he thinks, figures waiting at the other end but, not wanting to leave his family and friends, he returns to himself.

Does he remember any of it? I don't think so but I will have to reread the rest of the novel. Do such things really happen? They are reported and need to be investigated but meanwhile I will continue to suspect that persons end when brains stop just as dreams end when brains wake.