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.