ABSTRACT
This chapter uses science fiction terminology such as 'turning back the biological clock' and 'reversing the ageing process'. There are three great stories in science: where the universe came from, where life came from, and where people came from. And biology has bagged two of them and used them to spin yarns that reflect the ambition of Homer, the drama of Shakespeare, the comedy of Balzac and the menace of Mickey Spillane. The language of ordinary human commerce is composed of metaphors that are now used so incessantly they are no longer recognisable as imagery. The Hubble space telescope is not just out of this world, it is beyond metaphor. Science writers, however, can and do write things that not only have never been written before; they can and do write things that nobody could ever have imagined writing before.
