Vitals (Hardcover)

'Vitals is the ultimate conspiracy theory. A collusion between our governments, the dark secrets of our hearts, and a force older than time. You'll be blown away by its ferocious intelligence, astounding research and insight, and terrifying logic. Read it with the light on. Prepare not to sleep easy.' 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

Ever since he published Blood Music in 1986, Greg Bear has staked out for himself the bio-tech field as the setting for his increasingly technical and up-to-date stories. The question assailing science fiction writing and writers these days is whether the rapid advances in technology are rendering their stories obsolete before they even get to print. Vitals showcases the debate admirably. Bear's research, his exposition and the moral dilemmas and their implications are straight out of tomorrow's headlines. With a focus on ageing as the final frontier Bear has tackled a subject that is close to everyone's heart: the question of whether humans will ever be able to achieve immortality. The book's central premise is that ultimately humans are vast, cooperative bacterial colonies and, handled properly, bacteria can be programmed to live forever. Into this concoction Bear throws sibling rivalry, a world-wide conspiracy, a doomed love affair, some low-grade philosophising about twins, nature and immortality and more cutting-edge bio-research than any reader can comfortably handle. Indeed, such is the load of the latter that it's a full 90 pages before the story gets under way and then it only manages to amble rather than fly towards its end. Impeccably researched, with a plot which would have Hollywood studio execs reaching for their chequebooks, this should have been a book which leaves the reader with a wild buzz of excitement about what lies ahead. That this does not happen is entirely due to the cast of characters and their interaction. Bear's heroes come across as two-dimensional scientists and cardboard-thin stock figures, their motivation as suspect as their dialogue. The science may be spot on but it is ultimately the characters and their story that seduce the reader into suspending their disbelief and entering a book's world. Bear sets himself an ambitious task and then fails to bring it off. Let us hope that in future offerings he will manage to get back on track and write the kind of book that built his reputation again. (Kirkus UK)

‘A chilling air of highly infectious paranoia ... alarmingly proficient cross-genre thriller makes The X-Files feel curiously tame...' --This text refers to the Paperback edition.