Fred Chamberlain

We (Fred and Linda Chamberlain) have more connections with cryonics than simply as authors of the majority of the stories you find here.

We met as coworkers on a committee to host the 3rd Annual Conference on Cryonics in Los Angeles (May, 1970). Later, we founded the Alcor Society for Solid State Hypothermia (now known as the Alcor Life Extension Foundation) and published the first detailed procedures manual for carrying out cryonic suspensions (Manrise Corporation's Instructions for the Induction of Solid State Hypothermia In Humans - 1972). Supporting that, we also developed a system of equipment to be used in cryonic suspensions (the Modular Perfusion Apparatus), helped Trans Time, Inc. to organize, and later merged Manrise Corporation with it.

At Lake Tahoe, California during the 1980's we hosted a series of "Lake Tahoe Life Extension Festivals" that were nationally attended and provided an opportunity for technical presentations by cryonics people and others. Eric Drexler, PhD was one of our speakers, just before Engines of Creation was published. That's the period during which we wrote and published LifeQuest stories.

Along the way, we managed to place two of our parents into cryonic suspension. Fred's dad, in 1976, was the first cryonics patient to be suspended by neuropreservation. Linda's mom, in 1990, received the highest biological-viability suspension up to that time. There's a more complete personal cryonics history posted in Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fred_and_Linda_Chamberlain) by Ben Best, President of the Cryonics Institute (that's our suspension organization now; a complex set of circumstances caused us to part ways with Alcor in 2001).

As for our non-cryonics backgrounds, we might mention that Fred was a Senior Engineer with the Jet Propulsion Laboratory for over a decade. Linda was also with the Jet Propulsion Laboratory for a number of years, and was the Space Astrophysics Team's Admininstrative Assistant at the time active volcanoes were discovered on Io (one of Jupiter's moons) during the Voyager Mission. Linda (before she and Fred got together) had taken up refuge in a remote canyon in Idaho, building a cabin there to escape a society that seemed to have little interest in either philosophy or life extension. Fred, earlier, spent five years in the U.S. Navy as a diving, explosive ordnance disposal and nuclear weapons disposal officer. Online details concerning our parents' suspensions may be found at:

http://www.lifepact.com/frcjr.htm (Fred's Dad - 1976) and at: http://www.alcor.org/Library/html/casereport9012.htm (Linda's Mom - 1990).