Immortality, Inc.
8 hrs. 41 min.
Language
Russian
Author
Robert Sheckley
Author
Robert Sheckley
Narrator
Grigory Perel
Narrator
Grigory Perel
Description
Thomas Blaine is an ordinary man with an ordinary life. He has a cozy apartment in Greenwich Village, works as a yacht designer, and dreams of a vacation in Tahiti. But everything changes in an instant: a car accident on a dark highway in New Jersey cuts short his thirty-two years of life… Or is that only the beginning?
Waking up, Blaine finds himself in someone else’s body in the 22nd century. In this new world, immortality has long become a commodity, and corporations sell soul relocation like an ordinary insurance policy. The surrounding reality has become different, but even in this unfamiliar new era, one thing remains unchanged: human nature. People still strive to survive, to achieve success, and to find meaning in existence.
Written in 1958, the novel “The Immortality Corporation” unexpectedly—and accurately—foreshadowed what would later be called cyberpunk: Shclekly’s ideas can be seen reflected in Philip K. Dick’s “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?”, in Richard K. Morgan’s “Altered Carbon,” and in dozens of other stories about the price of a human identity and the body as a replaceable shell.
With his characteristic ease and humor, Robert Sheckley makes readers and listeners think about deeply philosophical questions. If the body is just disposable material, then what constitutes the essence of the personality? What is immortality worth, if in the end you stop being yourself? What does a human life mean if it never ends? And how do you survive in a future you weren’t prepared for and that never waited for you?
Listen to the enduring classic of science fiction—already here for a long time—in the expressive performance of Grigory Perel.
Waking up, Blaine finds himself in someone else’s body in the 22nd century. In this new world, immortality has long become a commodity, and corporations sell soul relocation like an ordinary insurance policy. The surrounding reality has become different, but even in this unfamiliar new era, one thing remains unchanged: human nature. People still strive to survive, to achieve success, and to find meaning in existence.
Written in 1958, the novel “The Immortality Corporation” unexpectedly—and accurately—foreshadowed what would later be called cyberpunk: Shclekly’s ideas can be seen reflected in Philip K. Dick’s “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?”, in Richard K. Morgan’s “Altered Carbon,” and in dozens of other stories about the price of a human identity and the body as a replaceable shell.
With his characteristic ease and humor, Robert Sheckley makes readers and listeners think about deeply philosophical questions. If the body is just disposable material, then what constitutes the essence of the personality? What is immortality worth, if in the end you stop being yourself? What does a human life mean if it never ends? And how do you survive in a future you weren’t prepared for and that never waited for you?
Listen to the enduring classic of science fiction—already here for a long time—in the expressive performance of Grigory Perel.
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