Is even near (but slower than) light travel possible? Doesn't your spaceship get destroyed the first time you hit some interstellar dust?
Sure; send yourself as data. ;) Just don't use comcast.
On a less flippant note, in addition to the interstellar dust issue, another fun engineering problem is providing the energy necessary. If you want to send a 50 kilogram person to .99c, you'll have to provide about 4 months worth of the United States current energy production (7 quadrillion btu per month or about 7 exajoules)[1].
Now, if you are wiling to increase your flight time by a factor of ten (reducing yourself to .1 c), you can cut this down to merely 15 days worth of California's total consumption[2]. Mind you, that's just the poor 50 kilogram astronaut. The space shuttle weighed in at 75,000 kilograms (empty). So plan on using about 9 months of the United States energy production capacity for your dinky .1 c.
Given that you'll probably want to STOP once you get where you're going, antimatter engines are probably a prerequisite for relativistic space travel.
I think I'd prefer micro-blackholes as a source of energy. Seems um..."safer" than matter-antimatter, and (probably) a lot cheaper, too.
http://io9.com/5391989/a-black-hole-engine-that-could-power-...
You also don't want to stop particle radiation too quickly, or you get x-ray Bremsstrahlung. So something a little less dense than steel works better in practice.
On a side note, I was surprised at his attempt at a romance novel. I was pretty good, but too long.