Product Description

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #205124 in Books
• Published on: 2004-10-05
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 304 pages

From Publishers Weekly
Everybody wants to live longer. Some are willing to go farther than others in pursuit of this dream, and in Rapture, Alexander tells the story of those who have gone the farthest. From the Extropians (who share "a Heinleinian philosophy of betterment through technology, and the creation of a posthuman future") and other fringe groups to researchers at the core of the scientific establishment, the book follows the various players and movements of bio-utopianism who all look forward to the moment of almost-religious rapture when humans can assert full control over their biology, in the process beating disease, aging and even death itself. Alexander, who covered biotechnology for Wired magazine, is at ease discussing the complexities of scientific research and is just as interested in the culture surrounding biotechnology as the biotechnology itself. In a roughly chronological narrative, he introduces the early pioneers of genetic research, building to the "biomania" that drove venture capitalists into biotech firms, such as Genentech, in the late 20th century, fleshing out the backstory behind recent controversies over genetic engineering, cloning and stem cell research. Though sympathetic to his subjects and their work, Alexander casts his tale in shades of gray rather than in black and white, and the result is a nuanced portrait of the intersection of idealism, capitalism, politics and science on the frontiers of biotechnology that will leave readers eager to see what the future might hold.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist
Written for the lay reader, this exploration of the fringe science of biotechnology is alternately spooky, silly, and scintillating. The author, who writes about biotech developments for Wired magazine, takes us back to the roots of biotech, to people like H. G. Wells and Jules Verne--people who thought and wrote about creating a new and better world and a new and better human being to live in it. Alexander writes about the different contemporary groups involved in biotech: extropians, transhumans, cryonicists, extro-punkians, life extensionists. He talks about hormone injection, gene splicing, cryonics, regenerative medicine--all intended, in one way or another, to create the new, improved human species. He shows us the people behind the movements, people with names like FM 2030 and R. U. Sirius, but the book's central character is someone less flamboyantly weird: William Haseltine, the former Harvard professor who now runs one of the world's biggest biotech companies. He may be operating on the fringes of science, but, as the author makes clear, what's fringe today could be mainstream tomorrow. David Pitt
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

About the Author

Customer Reviews

Excellent Book - Noteworthy History of Transhumanism
This book has got the buzz and the facts clear. It is a book about the "pioneers" of transhumanism and what they did early on that has set the pace for the futurists today.

Who else is going to tell the story but a writer that admires the ideas of transhumanists and also can laugh with us? If you cannot laugh at yourself, what is the point of living a long and enjoyable life? There isn't, and this is to Brian Alexander's credit.

We owe a lot to the Los Angeles Transhumanists - FM Esfandiary, Natasha Vita-More, Eric Drexler, Max More, Ralph Merkle, Greg Fahy - the entire gang.

If you want to read a book that literally gets you to go to the frig and get a beer, kick back on the sofa, and dream of a long life - this is the book!

Left of Center - but thinking toward the future.

Jason Jefferson

A brilliant history of scientific & spiritual thought
I know many of the people outlined in this book and am deeply involved in cloning. Alexander's portrayal of me and my activities was accurate & pithy but was unduly one-dimensional.
However, this is a brilliant work which ties together ideas that have combined within the past decade or so to become a movement called Transhumanism.
By connecting the thoughts of early scientific dreamers with the realities of modern day biotechnology, Brian Alexander deserves the glowing cover blurb by Glen McGee:
"Brian Alexander has turned the most important scientific revolution since Galileo into an adventure story that touches your mind and soul. No writer has ever dug this deep or looked forward this imaginatively. With Rapture, Alexander has become the voice of biotechnology for the 21st Century."
As a cloning activist, I usually end up debating McGee on the air. However, he is right on target here. Alexander is quite right that science and biotechnology have become a new religion for disparate groups that believe in cryonics, cloning, life extension, etc. Many don't like the label "religion" because religionists are usually the ones persecuting them. The historic philosophical roots of this religion versus science debate provide a useful perspective to the new debates we are having in this new age.
If I could give it ten stars, I would. It is really the most informative "connecting" book I have ever read.

It's not "religious" if you can do it
Brian Alexander writes about many people I happen to know. In fact, his description of the Extropian movement in the early 1990's made me rather nostalgic.

But he doesn't seem to understand why people would want to conquer aging and death, and he performs a disservice by characterizing the movement as a "religion," by which he means a belief system that's impractical or lacking factual support. Scientists have radically extended the lives of certain species of laboratory animals in apparent good health. Because of the conservative nature of the genome across species, similar biochemical pathways probably exist in humans that we might be able to use to retard aging and greatly extend our healthy lives well past 120 years.

Religions, by contrast, don't have anything like an animal model to demonstrate that their beliefs can send animals' "souls" to otherworldly heavens, much less human "souls." So comparing physical immortalism with a religion is patently absurd.

Still, I gave the book three stars because Alexander provides some valuable information and historical insight into a social movement that promises to revolutionize the human condition, unless the Kassian "Yuck" faction succeeds in suppressing it.