Preface
SUPERMAN IN THE FIRST AND SECOND PERSON
By working hard and saving my money, I intend to become an immortal superman. Naturally, many still question the realism and propriety of such a goal; they see this kind of ambition as both foolish and vulgar. I hope to show that those who are willing to settle for mortality and humanity just do not understand their predicament or their opportunity, how lowly they are and how exalted they may become.
That physical immortality—indefinitely extended life— is indeed within the grasp of us now living was the main theme of a previous book. Since then, a vigorous cryonics program has come into being; "dead" people are being frozen and stored in hope of eventual rescue—revival, repair, rejuvenation and improvement.
Practicing immortals are still exceptional, however. (Many are cold, but few are frozen.) There is little support for research to cure old age, despite the efforts and prestige of the Gerontological Society. One reason is a failure of motivation, which depends in part on the feasibility and desirability of improving people—of changing ourselves into supermen. Merely to expand time, without expanding the psyche, seems to hold little attraction.
Furthermore, pundits regularly allow that we should not aim to become superhuman, for a variety of complicated reasons. For example "An ape is not just a super-amoeba, a man is not merely a super-ape, and a 'superman' would not represent progress but only intensification of our traits and shortcomings."
They assert that when we come out of cryonic suspension--after we are thawed, revived and rejuvenated--our efforts to improve out minds and bodies will result only in more cunning and voracious apes, bigger and hungrier amoebae.
The criticisms are vacuous because they are made in a vacuum; very little serious attention has been given to the potentialities of supermen. To the best of my knowledge this book is the first of its kind--the first to deal in a reasonably systematic way with the varieties and potential of superhumans. These should be of considerable interest even to those who choose to regard them as mere possibilities for our remote posterity.
I hope not everyone will so regard them. You personally and your families have a genuine opportunity to prolong your lives indefinitely and outgrow the human mold; you can really exercise some of the options outlined here or else better ones after your own heart's desire, remolded with each change of heart. If you apprehend the reality of this opportunity and if you actually take the necessary steps soon enough, why then, the adventures of the long tomorrow, which I firmly intend shall belong to me and mine, will be yours too.
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