Ettinger, Robert C W
Entry updated 12 September 2022. Tagged: Author.
(1918-2011) US lecturer in physics, Cryonics advocate and founder in 1976 of the Cryonics Institute, which preserves the dead as safely as possible given the technological and legal constraints in the early twenty-first century, and writer. He began his short career as an sf author with "The Penultimate Trump" for Startling Stories in March 1948, about achieving Immortality; but he is much better known for two nonfiction texts, both of which advocate life extension through Cryonic freezing, and the second of which describes a Utopian future full of resuscitated Supermen. They are The Prospect of Immortality (1963 chap [privately issued]; cut June 1963 Worlds of Tomorrow; exp 1964) and Man into Superman: The Startling Potential of Human Evolution – And How to Be Part of It (1972). Further articles in sf magazines included "Interstellar Travel and Eternal Life" (January 1968 If). Ettinger was often termed the "father of cryonics". [JC]
Robert Chester Wilson Ettinger
born Atlantic City, New Jersey: 4 December 1918
died Detroit, Michigan: 23 July 2011
works
- The Prospect of Immortality (Michigan: by the author, 1963) [nonfiction: chap: pb/]
- The Prospect of Immortality (Garden City, New York: Doubleday and Company, 1964) [nonfiction: exp of the above: hb/]
- Man into Superman: The Startling Potential of Human Evolution – And How to Be Part of It (New York: St Martin's Press, 1972) [nonfiction: hb/]
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