Why you want to read Alcor’s new book

So perhaps you’re fairly new to Alcor and cryonics. You’re pretty sure this technology might be worth investigating; maybe you’ve even gotten signed up. But there’s a lot you don’t know. When your friends and relatives ask you those awkward questions about WHY you’re doing this and what makes you think it will work, you haven’t figured out solid answers yet. Especially if you live in an area without many other people involved in cryonics, you may really need solid ideas. You may even wish you have a book you could hand some of them, something that might make all of these ideas clear.

We have that book – Preserving Minds, Saving Lives: The Best Cryonics Writings from the Alcor Life Extension Foundation. We have been working on those answers for more than 35 years, often in the pages of our magazine, Cryonics. This book takes many of those great answers and puts them together in one volume for you.

Why do we preserve patients in liquid nitrogen? How might that change in the future?

What is the difference between freezing and vitrification? Why is vitrification better?

How does cryonics connect with religious beliefs?

What kind of research has been done in the past and what is needed for the future?

Why do some people choose whole body preservation and some choose to only preserve their brains?

When will the cryopreserved patients be brought back to life? Wait – should we even call them “dead” or are they already “alive” in some way? And who will pay for it?

How did this odd idea get started in the first place? What has Alcor gone through to get to this point? What mistakes were made along the way and how do we know cryonicists have learned from those mistakes? Why the heck isn’t cryonics wildly popular?

It’s all here, along with many other discussions, by the best writers Alcor has had to offer for more than three decades. There are a handful of technical articles, because we want to make sure that the bases for this technology are readily available for future researchers. But most of the articles are accessible to anyone.

This is the book you need. We have both hardcover and paperback copies, and we’re working on an e-book version. The book is printed on very high-quality paper and will last a long time. It ought to say something worth lasting as long as the paper.

You can order from Alcor right now:

http://www.alcor.org/book/index.html

Really, we want you to have this information, because we want you to last even longer than this book. That’s what cryonics is all about. Get smart, live long – buy a book.

Stephen Bridge, co-editor