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Fantastic Voyage: Live Long Enough to Live Forever | 
 enlarge | Authors: Ray Kurzweil, Terry Grossman
Publisher: Plume
Category: Book
List Price: $17.00
Buy New: $2.99
You Save: $14.01 (82%)
New (45) from $2.99
Avg. Customer Rating:  69 reviews
Sales Rank: 9956
Media: Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 464
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.1
Dimensions (in): 8.9 x 5.8 x 1.1
ISBN: 0452286670
Dewey Decimal Number: 610
EAN: 9780452286672
ASIN: 0452286670
Publication Date: September 27, 2005
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Shipping: Expedited shipping available
Condition: SATISFACTION GUARANTEED! NEW Book! May have remainder mark. Most orders ship within 1 BUSINESS DAY with ORDER CONFIRMATION.
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Amazon.com Review
The idea behind Kurzweil and Grossman's Fantastic Voyage is that if you can make it through the next 50 years, you might become immortal. How will that be possible? Through some rather science fictional steps, it turns out, including taking advantage of the latest in biotechnological breakthroughs and not-yet-invented nanotechnology. Is all this longing for immortality driven by an obsession with youth or a fear of death? Readers can judge for themselves, as both Kurzweil and Grossman reveal the personal histories that led them to develop this plan. Fantastic Voyage is written in an easy-to-understand tone, with lots of sidebars giving examples of what the future holds for medicine and health. Whether or not you think that science will find a way to keep our bodies or our disembodied minds alive forever, this book is full of diet and lifestyle tips. For instance, the authors suggest carefully controlling the body's overall pH at an alkaline level, meditating, eating a diet composed mostly of vegetables and protein, and taking loads of supplements (Kurzweil downs about 250 pills each day). The dietary options presented here will mostly only be practical for people whose income levels can support buying organic produce, fresh fish and meat, and top-shelf supplements. The authors cavalierly state that we are living in a "time of abundance," but it seems likely that most who are able to follow this regimen will be Americans of a fairly high socioeconomic class. --Therese Littleton
Product Description
Tap todays technological breakthroughs to live longer and better. Startling discoveries in the areas of genomics, biotechnology, and nanotechnology occur practically every day. The rewards of this research, some of it as spectacular as science fiction, are practically in our grasp. Fantastic Voyage shows us how we can use these new technologies to live longer than previously imaginable. The authors take the reader on a journey to undreamed-of vitality with a comprehensive investigation into the cutting-edge science regarding diet, supplementation, genetics, detoxification, and the hormones involved with aging and youth. By following their program, which includes such simple recommendations as eating a balanced, low- glycemic-index diet, and taking powerful anti-aging nutritional supplements, anyone will be able to add years of healthy, active life.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 64 more reviews...
 Eat right, exercise often, reduce stress, and buy tons of crap from us. September 12, 2008
A few months back, there was a lot of hype in the media about Reseveratrol. That's the miracle compound in red wine that explains why French people don't get heart attacks, despite having a very unhealthy diet. Being one with an interest in healthy living, or more accurately, diet and nutrition with the aim of enhancing performance (mental and physical), I picked this book up because it includes information on recent developments. You wanna know what it says?
Eat right, exercise often, reduce stress and buy tons of crap from them. The former three are pretty common sense, and I think you'd have to have been in a coma for the last 40 years not to know what they mean. The latter is a bit... off-putting.
Whenever I see a statement as obscenely hyperbolic as "Live Long Enough to Live Forever" I usually take that as a flashing red sign with 12 foot letters glaring "We are completely full of sh**". However, most of what's in here is sound advice and with an interest in marketing, perhaps the ludicrous sub-title will help this book find it's way into the hands of someone who needs it.
Those of us not taken in by such cheap sales tactics would be better served by college level nutrition and exercise physiology books - both of which will be available at your local college bookstore.
Unsuitable for anyone with a basic understanding of nutrition, but that's not the target demographic anyways.
 Fantastic Voyage: Live Long Enough to Live Forever September 4, 2008
This is a awesome book! Well written and easy to understand.
It is a must read for everyone who wants to live a long and healthly life.
Starter Book for the rest of your life August 21, 2008
I heard about this book on NPR a few years ago and decided to buy it. I enjoyed the book so much I bought 10 more paperbacks to give to friends and family. What is most interesting about this book and the genre of books I have since purchased is the life extension concept and how early we are, medically speaking, in understanding this important medical field.
The author explains in non-technical ways how proper nutrients, mineral, vitamins, and fatty acids interact with peoples genetic code to help promote better health. There is some self-diagnosing and treatments that the author explains using clinical trials and other studies as support for his conclusions.
Overall, the author is very convincing and intreprets extremely well the studies and findings into a wealth of information for you and me to use as a life extension medical book. The book is now over 4 years old and other books have come out supporting this authors conclusions and recommendations.
If you want to be healther, live longer, and train yourself on what proper eating and supplements augmentation can do, read this book.
I've determined that the word "dieting" is not your friend, however if you learn to eat the proper foods and avoid the foods that cause your body the most problems like inflamation, diabetes, and arthritus then you'll never diet again, ever. Even overweight people can live to be 100 hundred years old. Google it. It's all about the proper nutrition and NOT medicine!!!
Hard science, and philosphically engaging... July 9, 2008
I actually enjoyed this quite a bit.
There is a Three Bridge system to health that is suggested. Current preventative medicine (supplementation, and alternative, among others), new and soon to come drugs, and future nanotechnology and genetic engineering, respectively.
Throughout the book there are small breaks in the text where ideas for reaching these three bridges are discussed. Some of it seems very schifi-ish but, if you're like me you will enjoy the read anyways (food belts, tissue replacement, nanotechnology enhanced bone repair, nanobot blood cells, etc.).
The main downside to the book was it's length (I tend to be a slow reader) and extensive discussion of facts and studies and lots of numbers. Often times the things have no relevance to my current life situation. Being a young, fit and healthy man made the paragraphs on menopause rather dry and boring.
My favorite part of the book was the discussions it inspired. Many bioethical topics which I could bring up with friends and coworkers which resulted in very stimulating conversations. Along with that I really enjoyed the last two chapters; exercise and stress reduction. Especially towards the end of the book things get more philosophical as he discusses how important it is to your health to have meaning in your life.
I think the overall goal of the book is great. That being, to inspire the reader to better themselves. Very Buddhist.
I also enjoyed the occasional hint of humor.
Good guide to living forever--BUT boy, is it depressing! May 2, 2008
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
I am reading Ray's Singularity book, where he makes a convincing case that tech is moving forward so incredibly fast that there's a good chance that if you can only make it to 2020 still alive & functioning, you might live a much longer life than we do now, and in a much better state of health.
I know Ray eats lots of health pills and stuff, and wanted to get his recommendations for what exactly to do to actually live to 2020 (when I will be 80). The book does a good job of methodically working through all aspects of a healthy life, from exercise and stress to diet, with a heavy emphasis on diet. It is certainly "actionable" since he tells you what you need to do.
Problem is, what you need to do is give up anything you've ever liked to eat in your life, and spend the rest of your life (or until 2020) eating stuff that has no flavor, no taste, no fun, no jazz. Give up sweets, simple starches like potatoes, macaroni, spaghetti, bread other than whole-wheat with pebbles in it, ice cream and milk and all other dairy products, and every form of meat except salmon -- not even tuna and swordfish because they have high mercury levels. No gravies or sauces, no mayo, only olive oil--and only certain specific expensive olive oils, too.
Instead you are to revert to your hunter-gatherer ancestral dietary load of raw everything, fatless everything, little meat, little sweet, little tasty -- if it's tasteless, dry, chewy, and flavorless, then good. If you find yourself smiling after you take a bite--then spit it out, it's killing you!
Kiss off mealtime and snacktime as joyful enterprises in your life. Eating is something you will from now on do for fuel only, not for pleasure.
To be fair, Ray and his partner make two points: First, if you really do try to reduce yourself to this level of eating, after a while you will get somewhat used to it -- it's supposedly true that, for example, if you eat a lot of sweets you become addicted to sweet tastes, whereas if you forgo sweets, after a while your sweet tooth diminishes. So it's not torture forever--just for the months (or years?) it will take your body and your taste buds to adjust. I suppose that might have some truth to it. God knows if I have chocolate milk for breakfast (so shoot me!), my sweet tooth for the rest of that day becomes more like a sweet fang.
Second, he says that by the time we reach 2020, medical technology breakthroughs will make it likely that we'll be able to go back to abusing our digestive tracts somewhat, since medicine will be able to offset or compensate for our poor choices and we'll have sin without guilt once again. Ah, Eden!
But for now, I just get depressed every time I look in the fridge, or walk the aisles of the grocery store, knowing that every single thing that catches my eye will kill me outright, or at least before I reach 2020. It will be really, really annoying if I am the last man to die from 20th century body malfunctions! But if I had that much discipline and self control, I'd be a much better person than I have ever been. And how likely is that?
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