An obsession with perpetual youth may seem a particularly modern phenomenon, but it is a goal that western scientists and philosophers have aspired to (and worked towards) for the last four hundred years.
Mortal Coil explores the medical, scientific, and philosophical theories behind the quest for the prolongation of human life. It was a conundrum that intrigued Sir Francis Bacon and underpinned the scientific revolution; ideas of ultimate perfectibility, indefinite progress, and worldly rather than heavenly immortality fed directly into the spirit of the Enlightenment and even further into the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. In today's world of genetic research, cryonics, and nanotechnology, we still seek the same elusive philosopher's stone.
From Adam and Eve to human cloning and designer babies, from seventeenth-century lifestyle guides to science fiction, Haycock's gripping story introduces an array of fascinating individuals—René Descartes, Benjamin Franklin, Jonathan Swift, Charles Darwin, and Sigmund Freud as well asa score of unknown figures. Full of extraordinary stories and valuable insights, this is a curious, witty, and captivating exploration into our unceasing desire to live forever.
Nothing interesting ever happened to fifteen-year-old orphans Eliot and Fiona while they’ve lived in the strict, oppressive household of their grandmother. A chance visit, however, reveals that there is much more to the twins. They are the offspring of a goddess and Lucifer, Prince of Darkness.
Now, to settle the epic custody battle between these two families, the fallen angels create three diabolical temptations, and the gods fashion three heroic trials to test Eliot and Fiona. More than ever they need to stick together to survive and to learn how to use their budding supernatural abilities . . . for family allegiances are ever-shifting in the ancient, secret world they have entered.
Mortal Coils is a collection of five short stories, including perhaps his best known, The Gioconda Smile, representing Huxley's early work, written in 1922. ("Mortal Coils" is an old phrase, found in Shakespeare, referring to the body and its entaglements, which is cast off at death.) Huxley later went on to be a Hollywood screenwriter; Permutations Among the Nightingales is one of his earliest works in the form of a script for a play. Also included: Permutations Among the Nightingales, The Tillotson Banquet t, Green Tunnels, and Nuns at Luncheon ).
There is a London you might not know. A London of dingy pubs and brutal alleyway encounters; a seething metropolis populated by weasel-faced burglars, psychotic doormen, and professional killers with cold hearts and cruel intentions. It's a place Matthew Moriarty knows only too well. Jobless, hopeless, and half-crippled by a beating, Moriarty is at rock bottom, left with only a dwindling supply of prescription painkillers for company. And when he accepts a lucrative offer to track down a missing friend, things get a whole lot worse. As the search leads Moriarty into mortal danger, one thing becomes clear: mess with this city and it messes with you.
Rangers Gone Bad What would it take for a Texas Ranger to go bad? This story gives you two perspectives: that of Rangers filled with greed and that of a Ranger filled with rage. Each feels his actions are justified.
For a Western novel in the old tradition with a new twist on what can drive a man to evil, this book gives the reader a story that is hard to put down until he gets to the last page.
I found the novel spell-binding and each time I read it I found something new, something that I had somehow missed in the previous reading.
This is a book that Western fans simply must read: a great story.
