In Memoriam
David Frederick Richards
Cleveland, Ohio, 1943—Portola Valley, California, 1998
The Golden Gate is a work of fiction. All characters and events portrayed in it are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental. Particularly, the U.S. Army’s 18th Infantry Division is fictional, as are locations and situations in central Iraq associated with it.
HOWEVER, background astronomic, biologic, geographic, historic, legal, medical, and technologic facts, places, and organizations portrayed are accurate, including all specific life-extension science advances The Golden Gate describes.
The Golden Gate’s view leads the eye west, all the
way to the sunset. It’s a metaphor for life, which
also leads inevitably to a dark end. Unless you
buy heaven. Fortunately, there’s no third choice.
I mean, if the Golden Gate led to living forever,
consider the mess.
—Note recovered in the Pacific, west of the
Golden Gate Bridge, in 1995, associated
with human remains believed to have
been the bridge’s one thousandth suicide