The New York Times writes, "Pickover contemplates realms beyond our known reality." From one of the most original voices in imaginative nonfiction comes a stunning novel of speculation on the afterlife, immortality, and the existence of the human soul. "The Heaven Virus" is inspired by virtual universes making headlines today and offers readers a glimpse of ultimate spiritual technologies for the 22nd century and a mystic encounter in an age of electronic gods. "The Heaven Virus" blends humor, psychedelia, and hope in a meditation on the outer limits of our culture, evolutionary destiny, and inner space. This novel will draw readers who have wondered about their own passage from this existence into the world to come. Cliff Pickover is the author of forty books on science, mathematics, art, religion. He received his Ph.D. from Yale University. His website, Pickover.com, has received several million visits.

A Beginner's Guide to Immortality is a celebration of unusual lives and creative thinkers who punched through ordinary cultural norms while becoming successful in their own niches. In his latest and greatest work, world-renowned science writer Cliff Pickover studies these extraordinary people and their curious ideas. Through these individuals, we can better explore life's astonishing richness and glimpse the diversity of human imagination. Part memoir and part surrealistic perspective on culture, A Beginner's Guide to Immortality gives readers a glimpse of new ways of thinking and of other worlds as it reaches across cultures and peers beyond our ordinary reality. Pickover illuminates some of the most mysterious phenomena effecting our species. What is creativity? What are the religious implications of mosquito evolution, simulated Matrix realities, the brain's own marijuana, and the mathematics of the apocalypse? Could we be a mere software simulation living in a matrix? Who are Elisabeth Kubler-Ross and Emanuel Swedenborg? Did church forefathers eat psychedelic snails? How can we safely expand our minds to become more successful and reason beyond the limits of our own intuition? How can we become immortal? Pickover's book entertains, informs, and invites his readers--old and new--to test their powers of lateral thinking and to see the world in a fresh way.

The road that leads from the Mobius strip -- a common-sense-defying continuous loop with only one side and one edge, made famous by the illustrations of M.C. Escher -- goes to some of the strangest spots imaginable. It takes us to where the purely intellectual enters our world: where our senses, overloaded with grocery bills, the price of gas, and what to eat for lunch, are expected to absorb really bizarre ideas. And no better guide to this weird universe exists than the brilliant thinker Clifford A. Pickover, the 21st century's answer to Buckminster Fuller. From molecules and metal sculptures to postage stamps, architectural structures, and models of the universe, The Mobius Strip gives readers a glimpse of new ways of thinking and other worlds as Pickover reaches across cultures and peers beyond our ordinary reality. Lavishly illustrated, this is an infinite fountain of wondrous forms that can be used to help explain how mathematics has permeated every field of scientific endeavor, such as the colors of a sunset or the architecture of our brains; how it helps us build supersonic aircraft and roller coasters, simulate the flow of Earth's natural resources, explore subatomic quantum realities, and depict faraway galaxies.

If extraterrestrials ever landed on Earth, they would find us extremely strange. Their first intimation of our existence might well be a Super Bowl broadcast or a stray transmission from the "Playboy "channel. But, of course, they might seem equally strange to us. How strange? Their senses could be entirely different from ours--they might see in the infrared or "hear" radio waves.What would aliens look like? An intelligent octopus-like creature is certainly plausible. What about odd numbers of limbs--a three-legged alien with three arms and three eyes? What about an entire planet of immobile, silicon-based "trees" that communicate with each other via electrical signals?"The Science of Aliens "gets weirder still. Could a giant interstellar cloud be "alive" and intelligent? Could creatures live at extremely high pressures and temperatures? And which of these many possibilities would be similar enough to us that they could communicate with them, or they with us? Would they have any interest in abducting us? Would they want to have sex with us?In classic Pickover style, here is speculation at the far edge of knowledge--and beyond.