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

[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!