Robert Ettinger
Founder: Cryonics Institute
The whole story is a pretty long one. Basically, I grew up believing that eventually we would learn to cure old age, as well as other diseases. After a while, it became clear that this was not likely to happen within my natural lifetime.
When I was in an army hospital in Battle Creek, Michigan, after the Second World War, I decided that I had better do something about it, since nobody else was. I wrote a short story which was published in a science fiction magazine in 1948, but that didn't attract much attention. In 1962, I wrote a letter to a few hundred people, selected from "Who's Who in America," and that didn't get much attention, either.
It became obvious that a book-length exposition was required. In 1962, I wrote a preliminary version of The Prospect of Immortality. That did arouse some interest. I published it privately. In 1964, Doubleday published the first commercial version. That began the cryonics movement.
I might add that the full text of that book is available on our Web site, www.cryonics.org. And also the full text of my second book, Man into Superman.
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