Chasing Immortality, Living on the Edge: A Review of “Transhuman Citizen,” the Biography of Zoltan Istvan

“Although the project to end death is clearly important to Istvan, his forthcoming biography, ‘Transhuman Citizen: Zoltan Istvan’s Hunt for Immortality’ by Ben Murnane, reveals that he has arguably lived his life in response to a related but slightly different question…”

“What are you prepared to do to stop your own death?”

This question has preoccupied Zoltan Istvan for much of his life. It is what brought him notoriety, first as the author of the 2013 novel The Transhumanist Wager, which centers around the above question, and subsequently as an upstart political candidate. In 2016, he founded the Transhumanist Party to promote the project of ending death through scientific progress. During his 2016 campaign for President of the United States, he demonstrated that he was prepared to do practically anything to raise awareness for the cause: He traveled the country in a coffin-shaped bus, handed out atheistic pamphlets at a megachurch, and taped his transhumanist manifesto to the United States Capitol.

Although the project to end death is clearly important to Istvan, his forthcoming biography, Transhuman Citizen: Zoltan Istvan’s Hunt for Immortality by Ben Murnane, reveals that he has arguably lived his life in response to a related but slightly different question: What are you prepared to do to get as much out of life as possible?

From a young age, Istvan has lived life truly on the edge—not as a mad scientist working to defeat death but, rather, as an explorer intent on staring death in the face. After high school, he purchased a sailboat, filled it with 556 books, and set off to sail around the world. This story is mentioned periodically by Istvan in interviews, but the new biography goes into detail about what a seriously riveting and death-defying adventure this turned out to be. During the trip, Istvan encountered indigenous tribes on far-flung islands, worked as a diver hunting for treasure, and survived ferocious storms in the middle of the Pacific. He also matured from writing adolescent poetry to working as a journalist for National Geographic.