ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book focuses on the topics of life, death, immortality and the coming of a 'postmortal society'. Immortality has always been a powerful impulse in human civilisation, whether in the shape of magic, religion or science. Perhaps unsurprisingly then, immortality has always attracted the attention of and been a motivational force in different forms of creative expression and artistic imagination. Just as sociology back in the 1990s finally began to take the study of death and dying seriously, sociology should also begin to embrace immortality as a topic deserving of attention and systematised research. The often simplistic diagnosis and description of a process of 'secularisation' in the Western world, which results in the gradual undermining of ideas and beliefs about immortality with the advent of modern society and the advances of the modern scientific mentality, will hardly suffice.
