X-Message-Number: 12409
Date: Sun, 12 Sep 1999 23:45:30 -0400
From: "Stephen W. Bridge" <>
Subject: Book suggestions

To CryoNet
From Steve Bridge
September12, 1999

A couple of books many of you would enjoy.

1.  *Flash Forward* by Robert Sawyer.  (TOR Books, 1999.  hardcover)   This
clever and thought-provoking science fiction novel is a solid combination
of hard physics, philosophy, and characters, with a great "what if"
premise.  Due to a physics experiment gone wrong, everyone in the human
race has his consciousness thrown forward approximately 21 years for 1
minute and 41 seconds.  They actually see one tiny chunk of their personal
futures.  As people compare notes, they realize this is a coherent future -
many of the "visions" can be confirmed by other people -- and gradually a
mosaic of that future is built up.

But not all is happiness.  Thousands of people are driving cars or
otherwise in vulnerable positions when the visions come and are killed in
accidents.  Millions see nothing at all - does this mean they will die in
the next 21 years?  Others see only failure in their future.  The big
question is: is the future immutable?  Can new choices made today alter
that future?  Are there multiple futures?

The main characters, mostly physicists, argue these questions, using
theories from physics and from writers like Frank Tipler.  And we can all
contemplate the question, if you were given the opportunity to see a tiny
chunk of your life in the future, what would you do?  It's a lot of fun.

2.  *Poison Widows* by George Cooper.  (St. Martin's Press, 1999.
hardcover)

If you've dealt with life insurance for cryonics, you've no doubt come up
against the concept of "insurable interest."  This basically means that a
person taking out an insurance policy on the life of a second person must
have a greater interest in that person being alive than in that person
being dead.  Presumably this lessens the chance of murder for insurance
money or simple gambling on the lives of others.  It has created occasional
problems for cryonicists, when some insurance companies have questioned
whether a cryonics company can have an insurable interest in the life of a
member.

To understand why insurance companies might be a bit nervous about
cryonics, I recommend reading this entertaining true mystery book about an
insurance/murder scheme in a south Philadelphia immigrant neighborhood in
1931-1938.  Several less than honest insurance agents participated in a
scheme whereby a crazy Jewish "sorcerer" and several Italian hoodlums
claimed they could cure any illness with their special formula - as long as
the victim - I mean "patient" - had a suitable life insurance policy with
one of the hoodlums as beneficiary.  A number of lonely wives of unpleasant
husbands were sucked into the scheme.  The "cure" was short on curative
properties and long on arsenic, and several people were soon making a
comfortable living with it.

Interestingly, among the 30 people eventually brought to trial in this
case, none were the insurance agents.  Supplying the gun isn't a crime if
the guy doesn't tell you he's going to rob a bank with it.

Steve Bridge

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