Hey guys,
ImmInst Lifetime member, Shannon Vyff, has just published her first book w/ a futurist and life extension theme. Be sure to grab a few as gifts for those hard to buy for nieces and nephews. More promotional info is below... also post your questions for Shannon as she'll be happy to respond!
Bruce
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What Will Life Be Like in the Year 2189?
ImmInst member Shannon Vyff writes a book for pre-teens and families about very real possibilities of our future and manages to pull off an entertaining adventure in the process!
Imagine a world where you can ‘speak’ to your friends telepathically, use a machine to turn your ideas into reality and where you can even take your mind out of your body and fly like a bird. Pretty amazing stuff-sounds like you’ve stepped right into the middle of a science fiction story. But what if these ideas that are considered far-fetched right now, really could be part of humankind’s future?
That’s the idea behind a new children’s book, 21st Century Kids by Shannon Vyff. “In the early days of flight experimentation, most people chalked up the idea of human flight as pure fiction,” says Vyff. “They could’t believe humans would ever be able to fly, yet now we realize the Wright Brothers knew what they were talking about. I think the same can apply to other areas of human exploration and science.”
Vyff’s own children Avianna, Avryn and Avalyse, played a big role in writing the book; they are the inspiration for the main characters, served as sounding boards for the ideas and proofed the final version. They are also featured along with Vyff in an upcoming Barbara Walter’s Special, “How To Live To Be 150.”
21st Century Kids depicts many types of science that are considered exploratory in our time but have become fully developed in the future. The main characters in the story are a brother and sister, Avryn and Avianna, who are ‘killed’ in a car accident in the year 2008. But their bodies and minds have been preserved through cryonics and they are ‘re-animated’ in the year 2189. And WOW- has the world changed during the nearly 200 years that they were in preservation.
They discover that while they were ‘resting,’ ideas that were the subject of great debate in their day have now become reality. Humans no longer age, they can be re-animated if they were cryonically preserved and thanks to nanotechnology, the human body can repair itself. While many things have changed for the better, they also discover that science hasn’t fixed all the problems caused by mankind, such as massive pollution that makes part of the world uninhabitable
for humans.
“I wanted the story to reflect the impact that each of us has on the health of our planet,” says Vyff. “I want children to have fun reading this book and being awed by the scientific possibilities of the future; yet I hope they will also think about the possibilities they each have for making our Earth a healthier place.”
21st Century Kids also explores the controversial subject of cryonics, or the frozen preservation of a person’s body after legal death occurs, in a positive way. The characters all share their viewpoints on cryonics and the impact it could have on families and the world in general.
“I hoping to open kids’ minds to the idea of tolerance and acceptance of others’ beliefs,” says Vyff. “The scientific basis for cryonics is well-documented and there’s reason to believe that someday, humans will have the medical knowledge to revive those who are considered legally dead. I also wanted to dispel some of the negative myths surrounding cryonics. Cryonics is a way to be optimistic about having more time to help with the world’s problems.”
To order and review this book yourself please visit:
http://www.amazon.co...f/dp/1886057001
Endorsements:
1. Aubrey de Grey:
Aubrey de Grey, Ph.D., is a researcher at the Cambridge Interdisciplinary Research Centre on Aging and a scientific advisor to the Methuselah Foundation (www.mprize.org), an institution dedicated to ending aging and its effects. He is the author of book The Mitochondrial Free Radical Theory of Aging in addition to numerous articles in scientific journals.
From Aubrey to Shannon: "Hi Shannon - OK, I've read the whole thing now and I still think it's sensational!" (and he said he's normally quite picky ;-) ) Here are a few lines from Aubrey about '21st Century Kids': "The future moves painfully slowly from being fiction, to foreseeable, to fact; a key first step is to move it from being fearsome to being fun. Vyff's hugely entertaining rollercoaster breaks new ground in the "kid hero" genre by unthreateningly introducing children to concepts -- the defeat of aging, the revival of the cryopreserved-- that they may not only live to see but help to bring about."
Robert Ettinger is known as "the father of cryonics" for his book 'The Prospect of Immortality' and the breakthrough transhumanist work Man into Superman. Severely wounded in battle during WWII he received the purple heart. He earned a Master's in physics and mathematics at Wayne State University where he also taught. He said: "21ST CENTURY KIDS might out-magic Harry Potter. One can hope, anyway. Shannon Vyff conveys the flavor of "magical" science, beginning with cryonics and stretching to the limits of what we may achieve and become. It's a great read for any age."
Nick Bostrom Ph.D., Director of the Oxford Future of Humanity Institute. Co-founder of the World Transhumanist Association, said: "Childhood should be fun and so should the future. Read this to your children."