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Title: The Immortalists by Richard Cummings ISBN: 1-58864-010-8 Publisher: Inprint.com Pub. Date: December, 2002 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $19.95

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Average Customer Rating: 4.14 (7 reviews)

Rating: 4
Summary: ...quixotic and [appealing]
Comment: Surrealistic and quixotic are descriptive terms that came to mind as I read The Immortalists. But the contemporary issues were real enough and the characters clearly defined in this work of fiction.

Joe Forcione is wealthy, successful, living his dream life in the East Hamptoms with a young and [physically attractive] wife. He's proud of his palatial beach home and pleased that his investments have accumulated into the multi millions. But Joe is sixty. The vicissitudes of age are taking over. He turns to a phallic implant and viagra to offset his impotence, consults a priest dispensing healing miracles for dental bone loss, but what can Joe do to achieve immortality? He does not want to die. Of all spectres, past or present, Joe Forcione fears death.

Joe's quest - and a large chunk of his money - takes him around the world. He has sheep gland injections in an exclusive Swiss clinic and invests in various life enhancing or prolonging techniques. Perhaps he can escape death through cryogenics or cloning! The sky's the limit if you have the cash to buy it. Joe's mood improves along with his hope of finding eternal youth and escaping death. Soon he has a pregnant wife and mistress, an increasing [physical] appetite encouraged by a wandering eye, and a whole new set of problems to resolve.

The characters in this book are not caricatures. Joe Forcione is a typical American in search of ever increasing wealth and all the trappings money can buy. And I particularly liked Father McDermott, the healing priest with feet of clay, who moonlights as an actor and enjoys quality time with his mistress every chance he gets. There is humor in this book as well as surrealistic science fiction, and an underlying truth that all humans must eventually face. Nothing is permanent.

Recommended for mature audiences due to strong [physical]content.

Rating: 4
Summary: Interesting little book
Comment: This one is hard to describe. It's fast-paced to the point of
being hyperkinetic pinball. One short, furious chapter after
another. Superficially, it's a very bawdy satire. Underneath,
there is a lot of serious stuff--rich people with no sustaining
religious beliefs, who are terrified of death, and will do
anything to stay alive, including having their heads cut off
and frozen solid right after they die, in the hope that someday
in the future science can no only thraw them out, but regrow
them a new body. The wonders of nanotechnology--at least in the
far, far future. These pitiful people run around spending fortures trying to cheat death, and filling their days with little more than sex. Not a perfect book by any means, and
indeed a bizarre one, but worth taking a look at if you
are interested in crazed people running for their lives from
the Grim Reaper.

Rating: 5
Summary: Geoff Leach Is A Fraud
Comment: ...

Writing in The Southampton Press, the noted writer Fred Volkmer observed:"Mr. Cummings has written a very funny book. He dedicates it to the memory of that master of satire, Kingsley Amis, who is "Always immortal" One discerns the Amis touch in his comic portrayal of the much put-upon Joe Forcione...But one also senses the spirit of Joseph Heller hovering over Mr. Cummings' zany characters. He has also written a very thoughtful book, probing at the very core of the fear that is one of the wellsprings of religious yearning and philosophical thought. The Immortalists also gives us a glimpse of the future of publishing. It is published by InPrint.com, which, unlike other internet publishers, is a legitimate publishing enterprise and not a vanity press."

Read this hysterically funny book for yourself ...

Renata Goldfarb