Robert and his second wife Mae Ettinger (née Junod) lived in Arizona in the 1990's, and I got to meet them once at cryonicist Don Laughlin's ranch near Kingman in June 1994. I told Mr. Ettinger how much his book Man Into Superman meant to me, and how I thought he deserved more credit for the "transhumanist" movement which had started to appear by then. I also asked Mae if I could buy a copy of her book The W-0-T position or self-actualization for women, the sort of book I wouldn't bother with now given my disillusionment with women (long story). She graciously mailed me a copy later.
BTW, my visit to Mr. Laughlin's crib had its surreal aspects because he displayed some of the accouterments of a James Bond villain: He owns a casino, though a downmarket one (more of the Texas hold'em variety than the baccarat sort); his ranch house in northwestern Arizona's high desert reminded me of the one owned by the casino magnate played by Jimmy Dean in the James Bond movie Diamonds Are Forever; Mr. Laughlin flew in from his casino, across the Colorado River in Nevada's southern tip, in a private helicopter; and he demonstrated one of his fully automatic weapons for some of his guests by firing it at a target. He did this at dinner time without warning those of us still eating at an outside table, however. I found the experience of unexpectedly hearing automatic weapons fire disconcerting. Fortunately I didn't see a white Persian cat on Laughlin's property. : )
From hindsight I wonder if the automatic gunfire had disturbed Robert even more, given his traumatic injuries and memories from the Second World War. I never heard anything to indicate that Robert suffered from a traumatic stress disorder like Jerry Leaf, however, and I don't recall seeing signs of his discomposure.
As others will document better than I can in the coming days, Robert started the cryonics movement with the publication of The Prospect of Immortality in 1964, a book scientifically vetted for its publisher by Isaac Asimov, who later dismissed cryonics as a bad idea for reasons extraneous to the science which I consider ill-argued. (More about that in some future post.) I've read the first book, but I can't say I have a strong "relationship" with it like I have with Robert's second book, Man Into Superman. In the summer of 1974 (I turned 15 that November), I bought a paperback copy of that book at the Skaggs drugstore & supermarket on the corner of 31st & Garnett in east Tulsa, about a half mile from where my family lived at the time. I think the company has since gone out of business. You can see a recent photo of the 40-year-old house where I spent my teen years here. I don't know the current occupants:
I have a lot to say about my experience with reading that book, but it would require a separate essay, which I've added to my list of writing projects on my iPad. For now I would just like to point out that while Man Into Superman gives an overly optimistic view of the state of cryonics in the early 1970's, when in reality things turned out badly because of "initialization failures," in other respects the book has worn well because Robert, who earned masters degrees in both physics and mathematics, grounded his speculations in the scientific literature of the time, and he also avoided setting dates unlike, say, Ray Kurzweil. He also displays a realism about human nature which I find lacking in F.M. Esfandiary's futurist writings from the same decade. (FM also suffered from a weak grounding in science and an uncritical acceptance of gee-whiz speculations from other popular writers.) In general Robert saw the potentials in a lot of new scientific discoveries and technological developments which placed him mentally way, way ahead of his contemporaries. His vision still reaches way ahead of most of us now. I wonder if the bit of the 21st Century Robert got to see disappointed him.
I have a lot to say about my experience with reading that book, but it would require a separate essay, which I've added to my list of writing projects on my iPad. For now I would just like to point out that while Man Into Superman gives an overly optimistic view of the state of cryonics in the early 1970's, when in reality things turned out badly because of "initialization failures," in other respects the book has worn well because Robert, who earned masters degrees in both physics and mathematics, grounded his speculations in the scientific literature of the time, and he also avoided setting dates unlike, say, Ray Kurzweil. He also displays a realism about human nature which I find lacking in F.M. Esfandiary's futurist writings from the same decade. (FM also suffered from a weak grounding in science and an uncritical acceptance of gee-whiz speculations from other popular writers.) In general Robert saw the potentials in a lot of new scientific discoveries and technological developments which placed him mentally way, way ahead of his contemporaries. His vision still reaches way ahead of most of us now. I wonder if the bit of the 21st Century Robert got to see disappointed him.
At any rate, apparently Robert received a quick cool down to minimize ischemic damage. If he passes through the right bottlenecks, he could awaken some day and see for himself how much of "the future" he got right. I would like to join him in that world.
From memory, as of today I've met the following people who have since entered cryonic suspension, and I got to know a few of them somewhat (not in chronological order of suspension):
Jerry Leaf
Paul Gentemen
Mae Ettinger
Robert Ettinger
FM-2030
Jackson Zinn
David Zubkoff
Thomas Donaldson
Paul Garfield
Wesley du Charme
I may have inadvertently left out one or two.
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