Vitals

Blurb

Vitals is a 2002 science fiction/techno-thriller novel written by Greg Bear, and nominated for a John W. Campbell Memorial Award in 2002.
It centres on Hal Cousins, a scientist who wishes to find a way to prevent death. He gets his funding from angel investors - rich businessmen who are keen to live a thousand years. However, on a fact-finding exploration in a small submarine, his pilot goes berserk, starts spouting gibberish, and tries to kill him. He survives, but when he gets back to the ship, he finds that a member of the crew also went mad and started spouting gibberish, killing four scientists on board the ship. The rest of the crew is distant from him, on the grounds of what he calls bad mojo. He is disowned by the sponsor in question. Hal's twin brother Rob is shot, by who is later revealed to be Ben Bridger.
The story develops from there, taking in his twin brother's widow, Lissa; Rudy Banning, a once respected professor and writer turned into an anti-semitic conspiracy theorist by a brain-altering microbe; and a scheming group of immortals who want to stay unique.