A small number of human beings can be prevented from aging but only if, starting from the earliest moments of their exogenetic conceptions, they have been kept shielded from all radiation in an enclosed space surrounded by an otherwise impossibly strong magnetic field deep underground. Yet the state of society and the strength of anti-scientific feeling are such that, if it were publicly disclosed that even this limited form of immortality existed, then many people would assume that immortality without any restrictions could and should be made instantly available to all but was being withheld by the scientific elite:
"'These days the knowledge would whip men into a murderous rage of frustration; they wouldn't believe the truth, they wouldn't dare believe, and God alone knows what they'd do.'" (p. 87)
In Robert Heinlein's Methuselah's Children, a much more enlightened public responds in the same way. The long-lived Howard Families are persecuted for not revealing their supposed secret and are driven into exile. Then an urgent research program does discover a completely unrelated way to extend lifespans indefinitely.
Poul Anderson does not tell us the fate of his troglodyte immortals but it is certain that they will not survive the Second Dark Ages.
4 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
Exactly, the life extending tech developed by the Institute of Human Biology was a dead end. Who in his right mind wants to live 130 years or more locked up deep underground behind massive radiation shielding?
I don't know if there would be murderous, riotous rage if there was a similar real world project of this kind revealed to the public, but it would be possible.
I recall how Hanno proposed to Cardinal Richelieu in THE BOAT OF A MILLION YEARS that it would be safe for him and Rufus to reveal they were "immortals." The Cardinal disagreed, for reasons very similar to those listed by the Director in "What Shall it Profit?" Richelieu's advice to Hanno was that he and Rufus continued to keep their condition secret, changing names and where they lived from time to time.
Ad astra! Sean
See also the Arthur C. Clarke short story "The Secret" (1963). Biologists on the moon find that 1/6 gravity slows aging a lot. But keeping livable habitats going on the moon is *expensive*. So a journalist visiting the moon who has figured out that there *is* a secret, gets told what it is, and is asked about the people on earth "just how are you going to break it to them?".
Posted by Jim Baerg
Kaor, Jim!
I never read that Clarke story, but it seems interesting. And that reminded me of how Anderson in the HARVEST OF STARS series that the very low gravity of the Moon would prevent normal, unmodified pregnant women from being able to bring their babies to full term and birth. Instead they suffered miscarriages early in pregnancy.
Ad astra! Sean
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