When six men are stranded on a terrestroid planet where they have enough food, what will happen to them? They will live until they die? But these men have had the antithanatic.
A different set of answers emerges:
without biogenic apparatus to stimulate regrowth of teeth worn down to the gums, they will make dental plates;
when monotony becomes unendurable, they will occupy themselves by building, exploring etc;
when they have accumulated too many unedited memories, they will gradually go insane.
Their problems are not our problems. Are they still human?
6 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
If I recall correctly, these men were stranded on this intergalactic planet for about 50 or 60 years. So, absent the antitnanatic, they would have died there. And the dementia caused by memory overload is almost certainly the problem they dreaded most.
Despite the strange consequences caused by the antithamatic, I would still consider Captain Argens, Hugh Valland, and the other crewmen human. What makes you wonder if they are no longer human?
Sean
Sean,
They were there for forty years. The ability to live on such time scales seems to put them in a whole different mental framework. Perhaps the main feature of human life has always been that it is short: three score years and ten but, for many, much shorter. Yet, for these spacemen, forty years, over half of seventy, is just a delay in a single job. Wenli, a few years old when Argens left, will be in her 40s or more when he returns.
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
Forty years, not fifty or more, got it. Yes, indefinitely extended life spans of the kind given by the antithanatic, would make for very strange consequences of a sort not familiar to us. Many of which we could not predict or expect. Lifespans like these would, in many cases, I think, encourage people to be patient, to wait out a if it could not be resolved, and so on.
Sean
Last sentence of my comment above: I meant to say"...to wait out a problem if it could not be resolved, and so on."
Sean
Sean,
In fact, even if there had not been that delay on the intergalatic planet, Argens tells us that the company moves its personnel around and that it might have been fifty years before he saw Lute and Wenli again.
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
Which explains why Captain Argens was so anxious to spend as much time as possible with Lute and his little daughter Wenli. How strange indeed!
Sean
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