Gray Matters by William Hjortsberg. New York. 1971. Simon & Schuster. 0671209760. 160 pages. hardcover.  

DESCRIPTION - Unrest simmers in a dystopian future where disembodied brains are kept alive in tanks, waiting to earn a new body. At twelve years old, Skeets Kalbfleischer is returning from a ski vacation when a lightning strike knocks his plane out of the sky, killing everyone else on board. Although his body is destroyed, a radical procedure preserves Skeets's brain, which spends twenty-five years in a fish tank before mankind realizes the implications of his second life. A key to immortality has been found. Four centuries later, it has become commonplace for the minds of the dead to be preserved. While warehoused in a massive storage facility tended by robots, the brains pass time watching old film clips, learning about bees, and meditating their way to a higher state of being. But for the facility's overseers, Skeets presents a problem. A twelve-year-old for all eternity, their most famous resident still wants to be a cowboy. To remedy this embarrassment, his handlers concoct a solution that will push humanity even farther past nature's wildest dreams.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - William 'Gatz' Hjortsberg William "Gatz" Hjortsberg (February 23, 1941 - April 22, 2017) was a novelist and screenwriter best known for writing the screenplays of the movies Legend and Angel Heart. His novel Falling Angel was the basis for the film Angel Heart (1987).

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