Chiller

Chiller  is serious science fiction, but also a psychological mystery/thriller. By serious science fiction, I mean a fictional story that takes place just past the predictable time horizon, and with some reasonable likelihood of resembling the actual future. Perhaps the best-known author of this genre is Jules Verne, who used technical knowledge of his day to spin stories that turn out to have some (limited) prescience. Such is "Chiller". The premise is that "cryonics", the practice of cooling entire human bodies to very low temperatures (liquid nitrogen at -195 degrees Celsius or -320 degrees Fahrenheit is a convenient, low-cost cooling mechanism), becomes possible in the 1990's, with techniques that should prevent huge amounts of damage from formation of ice in the body. Perhaps, then, in a century or so, revival of a more-or-less intact persons would be feasible. Gregory Benford, a physicist and professor, makes a reasonable effort to paint this as a plausible scenario.As a vehicle for the delivering the science fiction, the author chooses a life-and-death contest between a disturbed religious fanatic and the fledgling cryonics industry. The characters locked in this struggle are developed with enough depth and realism to make the reader care about the outcome. I think the "good" team is developed more successfully than the "bad" actors, although both sets of characters evoke emotional responses. In addition to the main characters, the author touches on some of the societal, legal, philosophical and religious issues involved.Why not 5 stars? Most of the mark-down comes from a flawed conversion to Kindle format. There are many trivial errors of the sort that a good proof reader could easily fix, but which break the flow of the story while the reader decodes the poor spelling, grammar, or word substitutions.Overall, I enjoyed the book, and consider it both entertaining and thought provoking. However, I'm not recommending investments in the cryonics industry, nor signing up for your own frozen trip into the future.

I am very happy with this book, anexciting read and very thought provoking. I will read this book again and again.

Fantastic work! Need I say more? Gregory Benford is one of the best science fiction writers alive. Not only does he know the fields he's writing about, his stories are well written and really hold your interest. I was totally wrapped up in this story, so much so that I began to fear and to hate the villian. Buy it and you won't be disappointed.

I loved this book. Cryonics is a fascinating social issue to me (although I'm agnostic about its success). The author weaves a great thriller storyline with interesting polemics about Cryonics as it rubs up against organised religion, and avoids getting over technical. Thoroughly recommended.