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The Immortalists
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  • Published: 14 February 2027
  • ISBN: 9781529945232
  • Imprint: Vintage
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 320
  • RRP: $29.99

The Immortalists

The Death of Death and the Race for Eternal Life

Formats & editions
Paperback
14 Feb 2027
Tr. Paperback
10 Feb 2026
EBook
23 Oct 2025
Audiobook
23 Oct 2025
Hardback
23 Nov 2025
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What does it mean for us all when death is treated as a glitch and Silicon Valley invests in the \"science\" of eternal life?

The titans of Silicon Valley are building the fountain of youth: one they not only engineer, but also own and control. By harnessing technology to ‘cure’ ageing, and investing in cutting-edge – and often controversial – research, these immortalists are locked in an arms race to pocket the profits of longevity.

Award-winning broadcaster and academic Aleks Krotoski journeys from cult fringes to the heartlands of government to meet the moguls, effective altruists, geroscientists and entrepreneurs who are disrupting death. Along the way she encounters radical life extensionists transfusing modified plasma, transhumanists determined to upload consciousness to the cloud, biohackers flogging AI-powered wellness apps and tech bros founding brand-new nations.

What was once humanity’s oldest dream is rapidly becoming one of the world’s most lucrative industries. But what does it mean when a handful of billionaires become the architects of our forever?
  • Published: 14 February 2027
  • ISBN: 9781529945232
  • Imprint: Vintage
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 320
  • RRP: $29.99
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About the author

Aleks Krotoski

Dr Aleks Krotoski is an award-winning international broadcaster, author and academic. She has topped the ratings for the BBC and Channel 4, winning Emmy, BAFTA, Radio Academy and Royal Society awards, and has written and presented landmark technology and social science series for both radio (with BBC Radio 4’s The Artificial Human and The Digital Human) and international television (with BBC World’s The Virtual Revolution). Krotoski has held fellowships at the University of Oxford and the London School of Economics and received an honorary doctorate from the Open University. She currently teaches at NYU Tisch School of the Arts.
AK

Praise for The Immortalists

A fascinating, deeply reported adventure among the increasingly influential figures who believe they can defeat death – and a warning not to let dreams of tech-enabled immortality stop us building a more vibrant human world here and now

Oliver Burkeman

Brilliant, painstakingly researched and altogether a wonderful read, Aleks Krotoski serves up an essential parable for our digital times

Kevin Fong

An elegant, gripping expedition into the technological apotheosis of an ancient dream. Can technology gift us immortality? In Krotoski's hands, this question is neither a promise nor a warning, but a meditation on what truly matters

Tom Chatfield

Aleks Krotoski, an award-winning broadcaster, academic, and technology reporter, has cast her eye over living for ever … Krotoski’s riveting book ends with a poignant account of the deaths of her father and stepmother. While the immortalists resist death, it will come to us all. The only thing we can try to control is how we face it

Roger Alton, Daily Mail

Fascinating … The new titans of tech wish to be as immortal as the Titans of legend. The award-wining journalist Aleks Krotoski wryly documents their antics in her new book The Immortalists … An entertaining and insightful account of those who believe the end of ageing is within our grasp

Stephen Cave, Financial Times

Eye-opening, entertaining and disturbing … [A] highly readable and meticulously researched book … Krotoski's goal is to open people’s eyes to what is going on so they can make up their own minds. She does it brilliantly

Graham Lawton, New Scientist

Life extensionists like Bryan Johnson want to live forever. But at what cost? … Aleks Krotoski, a psychologist and veteran chronicler of the tech industry, is well positioned to investigate and explain the phenomenon … as well as its social consequences

James Ball, Guardian

Aleks Krotoski’s fascinating new book penetrates deep into the heart of the Silicon Valley … it rises above the wellness rituals themselves and looks squarely at the metaphysics that animates them: the conviction that the human is decomposable into variables that computation and chemistry can optimise. The author's reporting around that conviction – its origins in grief and fear, its transmutation into a public liturgy of confidence – is utterly compelling

Justin Smith-Ruiu, New Statesman