Mannequin imagery recurs throughout the novel, reinforcing a sense of lost individuality. There's soul in the stories of real people like James Bedford-and his family's struggle-but not nearly enough of it in DeLillo's novel.ĭeLillo's primary argument against cryonics is that it robs us of our essential humanity. In his book, cryonics enables the superrich to "live the billionaire's myth of immortality" on an exclusive desert commune in southeast Kazakhstan, waiting until they can be successfully reanimated.
So they hope, and they wait.ĭon DeLillo's latest novel, Zero K, puts forth a much surer-and darker-vision of the future. Yet More's team believes that the part of his brain that makes him human has been preserved. The technology to reanimate Bedford-and cure him of the cancer that caused his health to deteriorate-has not been developed. "The original ice around his body was still intact," More says. Alcor's president, Max More, was there the day Bedford's body was transferred into one of the state-of-the-art storage pods.
The largest cryonics organization in the world, it currently holds 146 patients-52 frozen whole bodies and 94 frozen brains-including baseball hall-of-famer Ted Williams and Bitcoin pioneer Hal Finney. Twice a month, they paid a truck to top off Bedford's container with liquid nitrogen.īedford is now in the care of the nonprofit Alcor Foundation in Scottsdale, Arizona. Bedford's family stayed vigilant to ensure he never thawed, at one time stashing him in a garage-sized storage locker they rented in Burbank. But in the hours that followed, a medical team performed the first successful cryonic suspension, using ice to freeze Bedford's body before placing him in a capsule filled with liquid nitrogen. In 1967, at the age of 73, the psychology professor stopped breathing at a nursing home in Los Angeles. Some people consider James Bedford the world's longest-surviving person.
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