Reading the ebook of FM-2030's "Countdown to Immortality"

Amazon now sells a Kindle version, with a forward by Aubrey de Grey. FM went into cryonic suspension in the mysterious, far-future year 2000 before he got his book, apparently in the works since the 1980's, current and in publishable form; so one of his friends did the best she could with the manuscript and published it electronically in an ebook format - which probably would have pleased FM as "telespheral" or something. Therefore it contains some dated references, for example to the Soviet Union, to Dr. Roy "Wolford" (now deceased), to Dr. Paul Segall (apparently now in cryostasis) and to "by the year 2000" predictions of breakthroughs in understanding the aging process. The title and chapter headings reflect FM's "space age" paradigm of "the future," which even by the 1990's had sounded paleofuturistic.

I like this statement in the chapter "T-MINUS 9 AND COUNTING: TELEMEDICINE":

How outrageous that we who can pick up signals from our spacecraft at the edge of the solar system billions of kilometers away still have no rapid-alerts to pick up malfunction signals from inside our own bodies or cries from a distressed person only a kilometer away.

Some companies now sell smart phone apps with telemedical functions, so FM identified a plausible technological need. I just found an example here.

FM elsewhere in the book says some interesting things about the problem of reintegrating cryonauts into future societies. Unfortunately he also has a passage of woo-woo about using autosuggetion and self-hypnosis to "program ourselves to live far into the future." Sigh. Another example of FM's transhumanist magical thinking.

Nonetheless, cheerleading for radical life extension does have its place, even if it lacks much substance. I might write a lengthy review in a day or few, then post it on Amazon and on the blog.