1987 FOREWORD
HISTORY OF ME AND YOU BEFORE AND AFTER '62
In the ocean of human history, cryostasis will represent scarcely a ripple. If civilization endures, humans eventually will achieve biological immortality. Whether this happens soon or late is of no consequence in the saga of the species and its successors. But the timing should be of considerable concern to you and yours.
This Foreword is about You and Me. It may be useful to start -- as everyone does -- with Me.
I grew up reading Hugo Gernsback's old Amazing Stories, and just naturally assumed that one day -- long before I grew old -- biologists would learn the secret(s) of eternal youth. As I grew out of boyhood in the 1930s, I began to suspect it might take a little longer.
Then I read a Neil R. Jones story, "The Jameson Satellite", in which one Prof. Jameson had his corpse sent into earth orbit where (as the author mistakenly thought) it would remain preserved indefinitely at near absolute zero. And so it did, in the story, until millions of years later, when, with humanity extinct, a race of mechanical men with organic brains chanced upon it. They revived and repaired Jameson's brain, installed it in a mechanical body, and he became one of their company.
It was instantly obvious to me that the author had missed the main point of his own idea! If immortality is achievable through the administrations of advanced aliens repairing a frozen human corpse, then why should not everyone be frozen to await later rescue by our own people?
Or look at it another way: Stories of suspended animation (through freezing or otherwise) were old hat; and if a live person can be revived after freezing, why not a slightly dead one, whose damage is too much for today's medicine but (even with freezing damage added) probably child's play for future technology?
This is not the place for psychological analysis of the reasons why no prominent scientist presented or espoused these ideas. In the event, none did, to my vast astonishment over the years. In 1947 I wrote a short story embodying the main concept, and it was published in the March, 1948 issue of Startling Stories as "The Penultimate Trump". (No, the title has nothing to do with cards; the Last Trump [trumpet] is supposedly Gabriel's.) The story made not a ripple.
Disregarding Satchel Paige's advice, I kept looking back, and by 1960 it was clear that the Abomination was indeed gaining on me, so I wrote up the idea in a few pages, with the emphasis on life insurance, and sent this to a couple of hundred people selected from Who's Who in America. The response was very small, and it was clear that a much longer exposition was needed -- mostly to counter the dead weight of cultural bias. People had to be coaxed into realizing that dying is ( usually) a gradual and reversible process, and that freezing damage is so limited (even though fatal by present criteria) that its reversibility demands relatively little in future progress. . . For that matter, a great many people have to be coaxed into admitting that life is better than death, healthy is better than sick, smart is better than stupid, and immortality might be worth the trouble!
In 1962 I published a preliminary version of The Prospect of Immortality; this finally attracted some attention, and led to the 1964 Doubleday hardcover and various subsequent editions which launched the cryostasis (biostasis, cryonics) movement. Twenty five years later, as far as I car determine, every single individual now active in the movement can trace his involvement, directly or indirectly, to my influence (even though several others had had similar ideas in the 1960s and likely earlier) And this may be a tragedy....
...for the very simple reason that I had and have, no credentials worth mentioning being only a (now retired) teacher of college physics and math. It is precisely this that prevented me, for so long, from doing more: I knew I carried no weight bad no formal qualifications, and was no suited for a leadership role. But as the years passed and no one better came forward, I finally had to write, and later felt I had to form organizations(although others had come into existence).
This tragedy, in various manifestations, may persist. Potentially effective leaders may have turned aside because I (and later a few other obscure people) reluctantly preempted leadership. Business people and investors may have hesitated because the small, poorly capitalized organizations already in the field have had such limited (although increasing!)success in attracting participants.
But "tragedy is in the eye of the beholder. As Sid Caesar (or maybe Mel Brooks -- one of those really heavy thinkers) said: "The difference between comedy and tragedy? When the saber tooth tiger eats Moe, that's comedy. When I get a hangnail, that's tragedy." And if the Tiger of Death eats you, that is the ultimate tragedy; that is when the world ends, when the cosmos disappears, when Everything becomes Nothing.
The "tragedy" of the slow growth of immortalism pertains mostly to them, and perhaps to you -- not so much to mc or to us, the committed immortalists. We already have made our arrangements for cryostasis after clinical death -- signed our contracts with existing organizations and allocated the money. We will have our chance, and with a little bit of luck will "taste the wine of centuries unborn".
But our chance will be much better if we get help from you. In return, we are anxious to give you a chance -- a chance that will steadily improve as we work to shift the odds in our favor.
Since 1962, most of you have done nothing. That's mostly not your fault; many of you had the good sense not to be born until later dates; and most of you had few clues to the real scientific promise of immortalism, or the existence of organized groups of immortalists. Now is your chance to come in out of the dark and secure your unbounded future.
This foreword will include no effort to update the scientific evidence; to name organizations; to give credit to the many individuals who have played important parts in the growth of the immortalist/ cryostasis movement; or to specify that growth in terms of membership, research done, facilities built, money raised, and patients frozen. Other books are in progress to that effect, and the pamphlets that the various groups will sell or give with this edition will do part of that job. This is merely a personal word of background, a starting point only. I hope it leads to life unlimited for you and those you love.
Partake, therefore, of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.
R.C.W. Ettinger
Oak Park, Michigan--May, 1987
[Current address Scottsdale AZ]