The First Immortal: A Novel Of The Future [Mass Market Paperback]

James L. Halperin (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 31, 1998

In 1988, Benjamin Smith suffers a massive heart attack. But he will not die. A pioneering advocate of the infant science of cryonics, he has arranged to have his body frozen until the day when humanity will possess the knowledge, the technology, and the courage to revive him.

Yet when Ben resumes life after a frozen interval of eighty-three years, the world is altered beyond recognition. Thanks to cutting-edge science, eternal youth is universally available and the perfection of cloning gives humanity the godlike power to re-create living beings from a single cell. As Ben and his family are resurrected in the mid-twenty-first century, they experience a complex reunion that reaches through generations--and discover that the deepest ethical dilemmas of humankind remain their greatest challenge. . . .

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

In 1988, Benjamin Franklin Smith suffers a massive coronary and is placed into cryonic suspension, igniting a storm of controversy among his suspicious relatives. In 2072, on his 147th birthday, he is reanimated by his great-grandson, rejoining a world in which such procedures--along with eugenic selection, virtual reality, and nanotechnology--have become commonplace. Ben's friends, children, grandchildren ,and mother are also given second chances in this brave new world; technology has even made it possible for Ben to have his dead wife cloned as an infant, raised by their son (also frozen and revived) to an adulthood in which she marries him again.

If this sounds a bit bewildering and overwhelming, it is, but it's also fascinating and often has the ring of genuine prediction. As in Halperin's first novel, The Truth Machine, the technology is always front and center, but this is ultimately a story of people and the political and sociological implications of near immortality. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From School Library Journal

YA-A family saga spanning 200 years. The catch is that most of the relatives remain on the scene throughout this whole time period, or show up again by the end. This remarkable feat is accomplished through cryogenics, the science of freezing a person in liquid nitrogen shortly before death, with the hope of resurrection at some later date. Ben Smith, born in 1925, marries his high school sweetheart, fathers four children, and becomes an advocate of cryogenics. After his "death," his children squabble among themselves and institute a suit against the estate in an attempt to unfreeze both their father's body and his assets. Each new period is introduced by what reads like a CNN clip of current news through the year 2125. The scientific ideas and possibilities presented capture the imagination, and YAs are sure to ponder and question the images with which they are left. What happens to the soul? Would anyone want to clone dead parents and raise them as their children? How is immortality to be lived? An afterword gives information about cryogenics. A challenging and fascinating glimpse of one possible future.
Carol DeAngelo, American Chemical Society Library, Washington, DC
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Mass Market Paperback: 432 pages
• Publisher: Del Rey (October 31, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0345421825
• ISBN-13: 978-0345421821
• Product Dimensions: 4.2 x 1 x 6.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (144 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #379,988 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

14 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Great epic, truer than most SF to our future technology, June 24, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: First Immortal (Hardcover)

Years ago I was a keyholder in the MIT Science Fiction Society, and read tons of SF. Then, I heard Eric Drexler give a talk about nanotechnology, read Engines of Creation, and started studying the field. I was ruined. Very little SF stands up to even a minimal understanding of future technology. That, plus work, cut my SF reading to just a couple books a year. I now rely very strongly on recommendations so I don't waste my few "slots."

One of the few exceptional books that does have some grasp on the technological future is Neal Stephenson's The Diamond Age, a great SF novel that also gets the future of technology accurate enough that one can criticize it. There is now another equally nano-savvy novel, The First Immortal, by James Halperin. I understand he set out to write this book to force himself to research cryonics, and decide whether or not it is worth signing up. Cryonics makes sense only if we have technology in the future we do not have today. That look forced Halperin to come to grips with nanotechnology, and in The First Immortal we have a technologically literate view of future society.

If you want to understand the future, this book is a great glimpse, showing much of what nanotechnology will bring. It is also a great yarn.

The main weakness of The First Immortal is that it relies heavily on getting characters to "lecture" each other, and thus the reader. This sets out a lot of material that is important to understand, but the lecturing gets obvious after a while. Also the book starts out slow, but it's worth going through the beginning to get to the middle and end.

If you can only read one SF book a year, or if you don't read SF but do care what the world will be like more than a decade or two hence, then this should be your book for 1998.

{One caveat: If you read lots of science fiction, then read Halperin's The Truth Machine first. It's not necessary to read Truth before Immortal, but if you're going to read them both anyway, you should rea! d Truth first.}

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Amazingly realistic, September 16, 1999

By 

Jackie Tortorella - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: First Immortal (Hardcover)

I was tremendously impressed by Halperin's treatment of the whole subject of cryonics. His exploration of all the implications of such technology was very thorough. This book probably would have been worthwhile just because of the technology, but as it turned out, the characterization was excellent also. It did not make me want to freeze myself, but it sure did make me ponder the religious, philosophical and practical aspects of human immortality. For anyone who likes to think, this is a gread read.

12 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Wooden, uninteresting Sci Fi, October 26, 1999

By 

Lyn Robie (US) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The First Immortal: A Novel Of The Future (Mass Market Paperback)

My dilemma in writing this review is that, in principle, I agree with many of Halperin's scientific views as presented through the characters of the book. Unfortunately I ended up not caring in the slightest whether any of the characters achieved immortality or not. Who cares if someone else is immortal if you don't particularly like him/her? Halperin's ability to create a realistic and caring prose portrait of a human being is lacking as far as I'm concerned.

The tone of the book is polemical - for never a moment is there a doubt that this is a diatribe against religion and superstition. I have a low tolerance for superstition and less for religion, but the constant harangue is tedious - I end up feeling like I'm being lectured.

The book did not entertain or educate me. I found it depressing that such inconsequential and unsympathetic characters should be rewarded with the gift of a longer life.