As much as I like the ideas behind the book, the book itself is pretty awful. It's basically just a long-winded version of the Alcor FAQ with some amateurish stories tacked on. I couldn't wait to be done with it.

The characters are inhuman, the conflicts and challenges and constant speeches are implausible and yawnworthy.

There are tons of cheesy, already-dated predictions of the future, like Al Gore being elected President or people sending emails using "PC wristwatches". What are we going to do, type on tiny little keyboards with toothpicks?

At one point, we're supposed to believe that nanotechnology can restore frozen people to life, and restore their youth, by rebuilding every cell in their body on a molecular level, but they'll somehow still die of old age. Makes sense? No. Later, they do eventually figure out how to stop old age. Maybe by using the exact same technology they used to restore them to youth? Maybe it just took them a while to realize it could do both?

The standard answer for "How will we correct the cellular damage caused by freezing?" is "nanotechnology", with some handwaving. Instead, this book uses "nanotechnology plus artificial intelligence", with some handwaving. I guess that's an improvement. I did like the idea of general-purpose AIs taking the place of computers, though, even if it's only used here as a deus ex machina solution for unsolvable problems. Also interesting is the idea of implanting memories into a clone from *other* people's external memories of that person, to make an imperfect reproduction of someone who was otherwise completely lost.

At one point, two women get married and have a (designer) baby, then one dies in a skiing accident. While she's frozen, the other marries a man, and then the technology becomes available to revive the dead wife. They do, and instead of relationship drama, they just become a triad. Yay! Most of the characters are still intent on building long-lasting nuclear families and life-long monogamous relationships, though, despite everyone living for the rest of eternity in physically perfect 23 year old bodies. Good luck!

The author's really big on family and children and marriage and parents and big families and having lots of children and family relationships and children. Even after people can live forever they still can't wait to have more kids. Hundreds of kids each. The government pressures people to have even more children because there are only 26 billion humans and that... isn't enough? The obsession with big families of adults living under the same roof for eternity is weird enough already, but it gets creepier when they clone the main character's dead wife and she is raised from infancy as his grandchild, and he can't wait for her to grow old enough that he can take her pants off. She resists the attentions of boys her own age because she's saving herself for her grandfather, despite being a completely different person from his now-dead wife. Hmmm...

Also a weird emphasis on religion, despite repeatedly arguing against it from a logical perspective. Even at the end of the book, in the super far future when everyone is immortal, the main character thanks God for the chance at immortality to spend with his ever-enlarging family. Maybe the author is Catholic?

Websites recommend it, though: "The First Immortal by James L. Halperin is arguably the finest novel about cryonics ever written". "A New York Times bestseller, it's widely considered the best cryonics novel ever written." :/

(Cory Doctorow's books with immortality handle it a lot better, in my opinion, though without immortality itself being the primary focus. I guess the point is that those books actually have a story, and immortality is just part of the setting? This book is just the setting.) ( )

A book about Cyrongenics. Small world, since the Alcor Life Extension Foundation's warehouse is about a mile and one-half from where I type this at the gatehouse I'm working at this Sunday morning in Scottsdale, Arizona, as I'm also being crushed by a tsunami of snowbirds, aka: dodos. ( )

Library Journal Review: Dr. Benjamin Franklin Smith suffers a fatal heart attack one day in 1988, but his remains will not be buried or cremated because he has made plans to have them frozen and placed in a cryonic suspension facility. On his 147th birthday, in the year 2072, Smith is revived. This novel is the story of his life before his 1988 "death," including a harrowing stint in a Japanese prisoner-of-war camp and a painful estrangement from his son; through the years of his suspension, when a legal wrangle between his heirs threatens to have his body thawed and autopsied; to his reawakening into the brave new world of the late 21st century. It is a world where crime is virtually unknown and death has been undone. But not all is perfection in this scientific paradise: growing numbers are addicted to virtual-reality machines, and some people still question the ultimate meaning of things, especially when it is revealed that large comets are approaching on a collision course with the earth. More a passionate brief in defense of cryonics than a really engaging and satisfying novel; best for sf collections.--Charles Michaud, Turner Free Lib., Randolph, Mass. ( )

A science fiction novel discussing cryonics and some of the resulting ethical and other considerations. An enjoyable story that makes you think. The author has made the story available as a free download at http://coins.ha.com/tfi/ ( )

http://caveblogem.wordpress.com/2007/01/14/books-the-first-immortal-a-novel-of-t... ( )