Book cover

This labour of love, the product of 20 years of research, will be out later this year.  

The book will be freely accessible as an "open access" book, thanks to generous support from the endowment of my Sir Edward Peacock Research Professorship.  

As I noted in an earlier post, to complete this book I worked on it every single day in 2025, up until its completion in mid-December.  It consumed most of my waking hours. I am still trying to adjust back to normal life in the "post-writing" phase!  

The cover image captures the central frame deployed in the book concerning human aging and longevity science.  The steamship represents "public health" progressing up the Ocean of Longevity.  The waves represent the diseases which slow progress through the Ocean.  Off in the distance is the iceberg, responsible for the onslaught of the chronic diseases of late life, representing biological aging.  

On top of the iceberg is the shadowy figure of the creature from Shelley's novel Frankenstein.  Shelley's creature represents how the human imagination can conjure up unfounded societal harms from experimental science (especially translational gerontology).  The argumentation deployed in the book attempts to abate such thinking.  

The book cover also echoes Walden's travel through the Artic, as Frankenstein hunts down the creature.  It is the perfect image to capture the themes and message of the book.  

Finally, the positioning of the steamship makes the reader/viewer feel as if they are actually on the ship.  And we are!  It is the tale of the future in store for today's aging populations living in a warming and unequal world.           

Cheers, 

Colin