The Price of Immortality

Peter Ward

Apr 2022 · Melville House

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In the tradition of Jon Ronson and Tim Wu,  an absorbing and revelatory  journey into the American Way of Defying Death . . .

As longevity medicine revolutionizes the lives of many older people,  the quest to take the next step—to live as long as we choose—has spurred a scientific arms race in search of the elixir of life, funded by Big Tech and Silicon Valley. 
 
Once the stuff of Mesopotamian mythology and episodes of Star Trek, the effort to make humans immortal is becoming increasingly credible as the pace of technological progress quickens. It has also empowered a wild-eyed fringe of pseudo-scientists, tech visionaries, scam-artists, and religious fanatics who have given their lives over to the pursuit of immortality.
 
Starting off at the Church of Perpetual Life in Florida and exploring the feuding subcultures around the cryonics industry, Peter Ward immerses himself into an eccentric world of startups, scam artists, scientific institutions, and tech billionaires to deliver this deeply reported, nuanced, and sometimes very funny exploration of the race for immortality — and the potentially devastating consequences should humanity realize its ultimate dream.

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Peter Ward is a British business and technology reporter whose reporting has taken him across the globe. Reporting from Dubai, he covered the energy sector in the Middle East before earning a degree in business journalism from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. His writing has appeared in Wired, The Atlantic, The Economist, GQ, BBC Science Focus, and Newsweek.