Lanterna Rally

Author: J. P. Polidoro

Publisher:

Published: 2005-09-01

Total Pages: 264

ISBN-13: 1413497683

Reginald 'Lefty" Sanford, a famed Negro Leagues baseball player and pitcher from yesteryear, dies and his remains are questionably frozen in a cryonics facility in Arizona, potentially against his 'last wishes." An employee/ medical technician, Jonathan Bishop of the cryonics company, Mizaronics, is fired unexpectedly after revealing a catastrophic event that occurred during the preservation of Sanford - a breach of protocol for whole body internment. Amongst public outrage, Rachel Geary, a young newspaper reporter in Phoenix, and a well-known Black baseball biographer from Detroit, Wesley Thomas Washington, champion the effort of 'freeing" Reggie Sanford from his 'frozen casket of absurdity." Ironically, Wesley Washington also elicits the advocacy of a now elderly, former Red Sox icon, Ted Williams, a national hero and friend of Sanford. Williams, is retired in Florida, but willing to assist. The unscrupulous plot involves questionable medical vivisection and desecration of cadavers - science fiction that breaches bioethical standards and state-regulated mortuary practices. Futuristic cryonicists that entice the sick and elderly into submitting their bodies to an unproven technology of internment demean traditional funeral arrangements. Their belief is a future return to life in another millennium - a world where cloning and nanotechnology will cure all diseases that killed them. Industrial terrorism leads to sabotage and the theft of a critical biological sample. Jonathan Bishop goes public, having stolen confidential records and photos related to Sanford. The abduction of a key character in the book elicits a love story of incredible devotion, akin to Shakespeare's, Romeo and Juliet.'Reggie" Sanford becomes a pawn in the rapid-paced 'chiller" that leaves the reader questioning the validity of what is medically defined as, life and death, versus the definition that futurists have placed their bets on - a state of limbo where the immortality of Man is the inevitable future. The action-packed mystery 'chiller" questions who legally controls ones' remains after death. The non-validated cryonics myth and deception is currently in use today, albeit denounced by modern medical researchers, cryobiology experts and peer-reviewed scientific thought. Sadly, the U.S. and State governments have done nothing to formally denounce the sanctimonious charade.