Vitals (novel)

Vitals is a 2002 techno-thriller novel by American writer Greg Bear, nominated for a John W. Campbell Memorial Award in 2002.

On an exotic ocean floor lifeform retrieval mission in a small deep sea vessel, his pilot goes berserk, starts spouting gibberish, and tries to kill him.

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.

They are able to do this because they have access to bacteriological research by Russian scientist Maxim Golokhov from the 1940s who was working for Beria and Stalin.

Biology is a major theme in Bear's work, and bacteria and bacterial intelligence played a central role in his 1983 novel Blood Music as well.