Someone has done good research on Poul Anderson's The Boat Of A Million Years for a Wikipedia article, e.g.:
Immortal physiology
[edit]As their name implies, at a certain point Immortals stop outwardly aging, generally at about twenty-five years, though apparently among East Asians possibly a little later. When the Immortals' teeth are damaged, they regrow. Immortals receive no permanent scars and also never contract contagious illnesses, even during times of plague. They remain fertile for as long as they live and can rapidly heal broken bones or other serious wounds. If the Immortal men are circumcised, their foreskins will regenerate. Speculation on "recurrent intactness" among women is left unanswered, with the possibility of the female hymen likewise restoring itself having been brought up at one point during dialogue in the novel. Immortals can and in the course of the novel do die, as they are not capable of recovering from injuries such as a stab to the heart or decapitation. There is also discussion about whether long-term exposure to tobacco smoke might present the possibility of lung cancer developing, though the researcher who opens the possibility admits he has no data on the matter.
-copied from here.
7 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
Nice to come across another reader who studies Anderson so carefully.
But some "immortals" can show fairly minor signs of aging. We see mention of Nornagest's hair becoming permanently grey.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean: that can be a result of stress, though, as well as passing years.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
True, but Nornagest stressed that sometimes even young people's hair sometimes goes grey early.
Altho now 70 my hair is still more or less half dark and eyebrows are still dark. It all depends!
Ad astra! Sean
My hair is still mostly brown except that my beard is grey when I let it grow. I and my brother have a bald patch on the top of our heads, though our father kept a full head of brown hair until his death at age 89. Apparently the gene for balding came from our maternal grandfather.
Kaor, Jim!
If a cure for baldness is ever invented it will sell like crazy and the inventor will rake in a gazillion bucks!
Ad astra! Sean
I wouldn't bother with the baldness cure unless it was just one effect of a general un-aging treatment.
Kaor, Jim!
I agree. But short of a real world antisenescence treatment, many men agonizing over hair loss would still leap at a cure for baldness! (Smiles)
Ad astra! Sean
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