The Economist - USA (2022-05-14)

80 Culture The Economist May 14th 2022

Tricksyfiction

Her story, and his

W

howasMildredBevel?Accordingto

Andrew  Bevel,  a  “legendary”  Wall

Street tycoon, his late wife was gentle, frail

and kind, with a taste for pretty music and

the “innocent wisdom” of a child. But in a

thinly  veiled  novel  about  her  life,  pub­

lished  soon  after  her  death  in  the

mid­1930s,  she  shimmers  as  a  brilliant

loner  and  astute  philanthropist  who  dies

ofmadness in a Swiss sanatorium.

Who  gets  to  tell  Mildred’s  story  now

that she is not around to tell it for herself?

How accurate are any of the stories people

tell  about  themselves  and  others  anyway?

These  questions  animate  “Trust”,  Hernan

Diaz’s clever puzzle of a new novel.

As he demonstrated in 2017 with “In the

Distance”,  a  debut  which  chronicled  the

rough and tumble of 19th­century America

through the eyes of a young Swede with no

English,  Mr  Diaz  is  not  afraid  to  disorien­

tate readers. In “Trust” he creates a kind of

narrative  matryoshka doll,  nesting  what

may  be  the  truth  about  Mildred  within

obfuscating layers of story.

He begins with a novel within the novel

about a childless couple who live content­

edly  amid  obscene  wealth—“the  obvious

Dutch  oil  paintings,  the  constellations  of

French  chandeliers,  the  Chinese  vases

mushrooming  in  every  corner”—until  the

Trust. By Hernan Diaz. Riverhead Books;

416 pages; $28. Picador; £16.99

Eternallife

Who wants to live for ever?

E

ternallife, inheavenorthroughrein­

carnation on Earth, is promised by

manyfaiths.Fora simplereason:iteases

thefearofdeath.Theideaoflivingforever

hasotherdevotees,too.Itisnowpursued

bya motleycrewoffringescientists,cul­

tishgroupsandtechbillionaires,unitedby

a convictionthata waytomakehumans

immortal will eventually be found.

Meanwhiletheypintheirhopesonexperi­

mental, often fraudulent therapies that

promiserejuvenation.

In “The Price of Immortality”, Peter

Ward,a journalistwhohaswrittenforThe

Economist, delvesintotheoriginsofthese

beliefsandthescienceofpurportedcures

forageing.He spendstimewithgroups

suchastheChurch ofPerpetualLife in

Florida,wherecongregants discussfood

supplementsandcryonics(thefreezingof

bodiesatdeathinthehopethattheycanbe

revivedlater).

America’s“immortalists”,hediscovers,

are inspired by thedreams offuturists

such as the science­fiction writer Isaac

Asimov.AnotherinfluenceisNikolaiFedo­

rov, a19th­century Russian philosopher

whothoughtalllivingbeingscould,one

day,beresurrectedusingtracesofthem

floatingaroundinthecosmos—avision

thatbringstomindmoderndnacloning. 

“Longevity escape velocity” is one of the

immortalists’  central  tenets.  This  notion

holds that if science manages to extend the

human  lifespan  by  20  or  30  years—to

around  110  or  120—it  will  then  rise  expo­

nentially as new techniques are developed

in  time  to  keep  the  wizened  going  longer

and longer. The hypothesis was floated in

2004 by Aubrey de Grey, a British scientist

prominent  in  the  field  of  age­reversal,

whose  work  caught  the  attention  of

Silicon Valley moguls.

This  is  not  all  pure  fantasy.  Gene  and

stem­cell  therapies  and  other  types  of

regenerative  medicine  can  tackle  some  of

the  ways  in  which  ageing  causes  natural

deterioration—though  these  methods  are

yet to be turned into proven and safe treat­

ments.  That  may  not  take  long,  though.

Tech  magnates  such  as  Sergey  Brin  and

Larry Page, the co­founders of Google, and

Jeff  Bezos  of  Amazon  have  been  pouring

money  into  longevity  research.  Some  of

the startups conducting it have billions of

dollars  at  their  disposal  and  are  poaching

leading  scientists.  As  an  investor  tells  Mr

Ward,  the  goal  is  extending  healthy  life­

spans,  not  freezing  decrepit  bodies  that

might “wake up in 200 years from now and

commit suicide if they can”.

Some  immortalists  back  an  even  more

radical aim: doing away with the body and

resurrecting  a  dead  person’s  mind  in  a

robot or through some form of digital alter­

native reality. The theory is that this could

be  accomplished  using  scans  of  brain  tis­

sue, or by applying artificial intelligence to

reconstruct  a  personality  from  “mind­

files”—vast  amounts  of  digital  data

accrued  during  the  subject’s  life.  Tech

titans are bankrolling this moonshot, too.

Digital  immortalists,  like  adherents  of

cryonics,  accept  that  the  chances  of  suc­

cess are slim; but they are willing to put in

the work and money anyway.

Mr Ward combines thorough reporting

and  lucid  scientific  explanations  in  a  flu­

ent  and  balanced  account  of  a  diverse

movement.  From  the  tragicomedies  of

cryonics’  early  years,  to  tales  of  scam  art­

ists and reckless zealots, he is a vivid story­

teller.  And  he  ponders  a  world  in  which

people  do  indeed  live  a  lot  longer.  Even  if

old  age  is  made  healthier,  drastic  new

kinds  of  inequality—and  political  strife—

could result. If scientists succeed in mak­

ing  death  optional,  concludes  Mr Ward,

resolving such issues will be a prerequisite

for a “world worthy of a longer stay”.n

A drastic extension of human lifespans may be closer than you think

The Price of Immortality. By Peter Ward.

Melville House; 288 pages; $28.99 and £20

Me only cruel immortality consumes