Immortality: How Science Is Extending Your Life Span- and Changing the World

Do you want to live to be 200? How about 500? Maybe forever? Ben Bova, famed science fiction author and futurist, predicts that within the lifetimes of many people alive in 1998, molecular biology and genetics will reveal the secrets of cellular immortality, freeing people of the "threescore years and ten" most of us are allotted. Further, Bova asserts in Immortality, we will be living those long lives in healthy, youngish bodies, subject only to death by accident. To back up this claim, Bova offers a nice, clear overview of how genetics has come to the brink of science fiction, made accessible to readers unfamiliar with the terminology through the use of explanatory sidebars and basic definitions. If you find yourself doubting this prediction, two things might make you reassess your opinion: (1) Ben Bova was right when he foretold the advent of the Internet, solar-powered satellites, electronic books, and many other wonders of the 20th century, and (2) in an extraordinary 50-year time line, he shows how fast and furious technological developments have come--including things that would have been deemed impossible mere months before they happened. After showing how science is laying the groundwork for achieving incredible human longevity, Immortality examines the ways society, government, the environment, and personal responsibility might change in the face of it. No pessimist or technophobe, Bova assures us that immortal people will (by necessity) become more farsighted and thoughtful about their lives and the lives of others. The search for earthly immortality has occupied humans throughout history ... how long do you want to live? --Therese Littleton