Publisher's Synopsis
This story of a powerful man who seeks to cheat certain death and be medically frozen until a cure is found for his fatal disease takes twists and turns that are the consequences of a journey across unchartered waters. The fated loves of three women infuse the story with a tragic patina: one clings to the memory of her long dead husband, another desperately challenges death itself and the last knows that her love will die a painful death. A human guinea pig is needed to assess the viability of groundbreaking cryogenic preservation and she is recruited from death row with the lure of eternal life. When the subject is resuscitated she is insane from her sojourn into hell. Passing delves into the mystery of where the soul would hang out during a long cryonic sleep. Is there a heaven and if so a hell? Scientists began theorizing on the possibility of freezing humans for future revival and immortality in the early 1960's and the field continues to grow, gaining supporters and critics along the way. With the advent of nanotechnology and advanced molecular repair techniques many now believe that it is not a question of if but only of when it will be possible to revive those who are already frozen (several hundred in the United States alone) and those to be preserved in the future. Novelists as diverse as Jack London, Edgar Rice Burroughs, Phillip K. Dick, and Arthur C. Clark have used cryonics as literary themes. Filmmakers and actors including Woody Allen, Mel Gibson, Tom Cruise and Ron Howard have dipped their toes into the freezing cryonic waters. Accepting the science as an acceptable way to preserve life is not as difficult as addressing the underlying question of Passing Through. Where would the soul go?
