The First Immortal. by James Halperin. 1998.
Order it from Amazon.com.

I must say that The First Immortal (Publisher's site) is by far one of the best books that I have read in a long time. It is both a good story with solid, interesting characters and a visionary epic with an intriguing premise. This book is primarily concerned with cryonics but is quite relevant in that the driving force behind cryonics and other methods of life extension are the desire to live. This is a fundamental issue which is tackled by Mr. Halperin in this novel.

The supplemental information that supplied in the appendix is great. There have been many times when I have read a book that has whetted my appetite for a topic and then not known where to turn for more information. I hope more authors follow Halperin's example in this respect.

I highly recommend this book as an entertaining and thought provoking novel about life extension.After reading this book I have the urge to read Halperin's other novel, The Truth Machine,Order it from Amazon.com. which overlaps The First Immortal to some extent.

Warning- Some spoilers follow. Not plot but some details.

There were some juxtapositions in the novel that I thought were brilliant and the writing was excellent. Some of the things that I liked were Dr. Kevorkian and cryonic precedents, the use of court cases to present many of the issues relating to life extension, the allusions to Ayn Rand, the integration of the time line with the previous book (which I must read as soon as possible), and the mentions of Julian Simon and the Extropy Institute.

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