Friday 28 January 2022

Longevity And The Unexpected

"The Saturn Game," I.

Jean Broberg:

"At her age of forty-two, despite longevity treatment, the reddish-brown hair that fell to her shoulders was becoming streaked with white, and lines were engraved around large grey eyes." (p. 4)

Mark Danzig:

"At sixty, thanks to his habits as well as to longevity, he kept springiness in a lank frame..." (ibid.)

There will be antisenescence later in the Technic History. We note that longevity treatment has already begun in this opening installment. Minamoto's report which introduces the story is published in 2057. Thus, Broberg was born sometime before 2015 and Danzig sometime before 1997.

Garcilasco defends the role playing on the grounds that they will not land on Iapetus for a while and the ship is on automatic till then but Danzig reminds him that they must always be on watch for the unexpected. This consistent theme of every story of space exploration written by Poul Anderson links the opening and closing installments of the Technic History, "The Saturn Game" and "Starfog."

1 comment:

Sean M. Brooks said...

Kaor, Paul!

It's possible that some of what would later be called "antisenescence" in the Technic stories will become practical for real, in our timeline, within the next 25 years. After all, research in the aging process is going on. But I doubt there will be any major antiaging discoveries or developments.

And Danzig was right, role playing games has no proper place at moments like this, in space, when you are soon going to land on something so unknown as a moon of Saturn.

Ad astra! Sean