Writer's Block: Forever young

[calzephyr]

[Error: unknown template qotd]If cryogenics became a real, affordable option (i.e., if you could freeze your body until aging and illnesses were better understood), would you consider it?

I'd have to say no, because the future is not always what it's cracked up to be. There was an excellent issue of Transmetropolitan that explored what happened to people who were frozen - they suffered from a sort of future shock and ended up in homeless shelters because the future had no reverance for the past, only a contractual obligation to fulfill.

If so, do you fear you'd miss out on the wisdom that comes with growing old and dying?

This is the illogical part of the question, because all living organisms grow old and die; cryogenics just time-shifts it (in theory).

Comments

[zandperl.livejournal.com]

Larry Niven has a novel (the title escapes me now) where the main character has his head frozen upon death and wakes up in the far future in a different body, where the society sees these cryo people as non-citizens and a financial burden. The future society mind wipes hardened criminals, writes into their brains the personalities of people who went for cryogenics, and then forces the newly wiped/wakened people into a life of slavery to repay the costs of the process. The main character gets sent on a one-way mission to investigate other star systems for the future society to colonize, and manages to escape his enslavers by doing a gravitational slingshot around a black hole, with the time dilation effects pushing him even further into the future. And that's just the first third of the book.

all living organisms grow old and die; cryogenics just time-shifts it (in theory).

Not necessarily. We're starting to understand the underlying cause of aging (deterioration in DNA), so hypothetically we could eventually reverse it. You could cryo yourself far enough into the future that when they revived you, they would be able to stop your aging.

[calzephyr77.livejournal.com]

That's one author I have never read! I'll have to check that out, it sounds interesting.

Heh, I really shouldn't post so early in the morning sometimes. You reminded me of another early issue of Transmetropolitan that explores what it means to be human - it's a really great graphic series - the boyfriend of one of the main characters decides to join a cloud community where everyone is made up of particles.

[zandperl.livejournal.com]

Larry Niven is hard SF, famous for the Ringworld series. I like his collection of short stories "All the Myriad Ways" best. He has excellent science in his science fiction.

I'm torn on Transmet. The over-the-top sexism from Spider bothers me, but it's also so over-the-top I know it's supposed to be tongue in cheek.

[calzephyr77.livejournal.com]

I'm going to the library tomorrow, so maybe I'll try to find that collection of short stories. I really prefer SF short stories to longer works - they seem to get too bogged down in details. Have you ever read Tracy Weis' Star of the Guardians series? It just went on and on and she had to rip off daleks and Star Wars and everything else along the way! It's been years and I'm still angry at myself for all the time I spent reading those books just to get to the end of the story ;-)

The sexism in Transmet is supposed to be over the top and tongue in cheek. He is supposed to be a complete bastard :-D If I recall right, that kind of goes away after the first two years. It's been a while since I read it. I found Warren Ellis' vision of the future to be a little more realistic than most, or at least more realistic than clean, peaceful utopias. It's going to be a long time before we live in a non-discriminatory world.

[zandperl.livejournal.com]

"All the Myriad Ways" is out of print, and the stories in it have been distributed into other collections. :( His other collections are good too, but that one collection had all the most awesome short stories in one place. "Ringworld" or "The Integral Trees" are both older novels that should still be in print if you wanted.

I think I read some of "Star" but I'm not sure, but I think the author was either Tracy Hickman (man) or Margaret Weis (woman). I've been trying to find the Weis and Hickman Deathgate cycle to reread - I own the entire series, or used to, but it's not at my current house in MA, and when I last visited my parents in NYC I found boxes of books filled with authors A-M, but no N-Z. And the books apparently aren't out in audiobook format.

[calzephyr77.livejournal.com]

Ah! The library has three copies of All the Myriad Ways, but none at my branch.

My junior high library was a treasure trove of science fiction collections and I bought a few off of Alibris that I could recall. One of them was Nine Tomorrows which I really like.

Speaking of audio books, have you ever listened to podcasts of X-Minus one? It's a radio play series that itself was a remake of Dimension X - the sound quality tends to be better than Dimension X anyway. There some that I never get tired of hearing over and over again. "No Contact" and the radio play based on "The Cold Equation" (IIRC) always chill me!