Vitals [Paperback]

‘Greg Bear has written an excellent thriller and one that easily ranks alongside Marathon Man or The Odessa File … From start to finish this startling science thriller trying to guess …an enjoyable and extremely readable thriller’ Enigma

‘A chilling air of highly infectious paranoia … alarmingly proficient cross-genre thriller makes The X-Files feel curiously tame and is surely destined for cult success’ Starburst

‘Brilliantly playing on our fears about government conspiracies, Bear’s remarkable thriller combines extremely authoritative scholarship with impressive page-turning skills’ Starlog

Scientist Hal Cousins is close to discovering the key to immortality but someone has already found it and will kill him to keep it secret. Vitals is a tense technothriller in the best Michael Crichton tradition.

A mile and a half below the surface of the Pacific Ocean, scientist Hal Cousins, frightened of the dark and no friend of God, is looking for the fountain of youth. The Nobel Prize doesn't interest him. Hal is in longevity research for the long haul, the really long haul. 'Angels' (rich businessmen keen to live a thousand years) fund him. Hal finds what he is searching for: xenos, the single-celled tramps of the sea floor, each one as big as a clenched fist. But then the pilot of his sub goes berserk. Hal barely survives; the xenos don't. The pilot kills himself. Five other scientists in related fields die violently in the space of a week. Hal discovers a trail of death stretching back over decades, from Stalin's Russia to present-day Manhattan. Another epidemic of murder by superbly trained killers has been triggered by what Hal nearly discovered…

From the bottom of Russia’s Lake Baikal to a billionaire’s bionic house built into the cliffs of the Californian seashore, from the darkest days of the reign of Joseph Stalin in Russia to the capitalist free-for-all of modern America, the edge of immortality is the most dangerous place to be.

From the New York Times-best selling author Greg Bear comes a vivid and terrifying scientific thriller.

A mile and a half below the surface of the Pacific Ocean, scientist Hal Cousins, frightened of the dark and no friend of God, is looking for the fountain of youth. The Nobel Prize doesn't interest him. Hal is in longevity research for the long haul – the really long haul.

'Angels' (rich businessmen keen to live a thousand years) fund him. Hal finds what he is searching for: xenos, the single-celled tramps of the sea floor, each one as big as a clenched fist. But then the pilot of his sub goes berserk. Hal barely survives; the xenos don't. The pilot kills himself. Five other scientists in related fields die violently in the space of a week.

Hal discovers a trail of death stretching back over decades, from Stalin's Russia to present-day Manhattan. Another epidemic of murder by superbly trained killers has been triggered by what Hal nearly discovered…

'Whatever Bear touches turns epic…rarely have I felt so much the presence of great events'
The Times

'Vitals is the ultimate conspiracy theory. A collusion between our governments, the dark secrets of our hearts, and a force older than time'
Stephen Baxter

'At a time when bold enthusiasts proclaim that the keys to immortality lie within human reach, Bear cautions, in Vitals, that a strange and frightening world may await us if we dare open that door. The best book about immortality since Aldous Huxley's After Many a Summer Dies the Swan'
David Brin

Greg Bear was born in 1951 and published his first short story sixteen years later. His first novel was published in 1979, and his most famous novels, Blood Music and Eon, emerged during the eighties and have now become established classics.