X-Message-Number: 14413
From: 
Date: Mon, 4 Sep 2000 14:46:32 EDT
Subject: Clancy an immortalist?

Tom Clancy is one of the most successful writers living. Movies made from his 
books include Patriot Games (Harrison Ford), Clear and Present Danger 
(Harrison Ford), and The Hunt for Red October (Sean Connery). His forte is 
detailed knowledge of military and police forces and procedures (although he 
makes a mistake occasionally). 

His plots are complicated in detail, but basically simple--American military 
and police beat up on the bad guys, both outwitting and overpowering them. 
Notwithstanding, he is always at pains to try to present the opponents' 
points of view and to show that they are human too. For this reason, among 
others, one can't be too confident of all of his own views, merely by reading 
what his characters say.

His 1998 book, Rainbow Six, is not one of his best known, and I won't say 
much about it, except that the main bad guy is both a scientific genius and a 
billionaire entrepreneur, as well as a certified nutcake. Anyway, the bad guy 
and others say several times, in various ways, that getting old sucks and 
technology is doing something about it. A few quotations:

[A good guy] "...grumbled at the effect age had on his life, just like every 
other man of his age did across the planet."

[A good guy]: "...the next major milestone on his personal road to death had 
the number sixty on it.....someone had robbed him of something..."

[Bad guy]: "Aging is [a genetic disease]. Salk's team at La Jolla found the 
killer gene more than fifteen years ago. [The book is set in an imaginary 
relatively near future.] If we can find a way to turn it off, then human 
immortality can be real. Madam, does the idea of living forever in a body of 
twenty-five years' maturity appeal to you?"
 
Jim Halperin had modest success with his cryonics book, The First Immortal. 
If Clancy turned his best effort to a book based solidly on immortalism, 
preferably with a nod to cryonics--who knows? Maybe Halperin and Clancy could 
collaborate? Clancy's name gets top billing on a whole slew of books actually 
written mainly by others.

Robert Ettinger
Cryonics Institute
Immortalist Society
http://www.cryonics.org

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