by the end of Cities In Flight, Volume I;
by the end of Robert Heinlein's Future History, Volume IV;
before the beginning of Poul Anderson's World Without Stars;
before the beginning of Anderson's For Love And Glory.
Many sf characters have FTL without immortality and the characters in Anderson's The Boat Of A Million Years have immortality with STL.
There needs to be a very long novel or series about what immortality would be like over a very long period of time. As we count our age not in months but in years, immortals would come to count theirs in decades, then in centuries, then in millennia... Knowing that they had endless time in which to perform any given task, they might never get around to doing it.
Procastination is the thief of endless time? How else might their psychology change?
Addendum: John Amalfi briefly considers the psychological effects of longevity somewhere near the end of Cities In Flight but I can't find the passage right now.
5 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
Isn't it far more plausible that being able to have indefinitely prolonged lifespans is highly unlikely? In Anderson's Technic stories a meditechnology called "antisenescence" enabled humans to live in good health for about 110 years. The HARVEST OF STARS has a similar technology doing the same for about 130 years. Both strike me as probably not being impossible to achieve.
Anderson did write stories examining the idea of humans being able to live indefinitely: WORLD WITHOUT STARS, FOR LOVE AND GLORY, and the last chapters of THE BOAT OF A MILLION YEARS. I'm dubious about a single treatment being able to indefinitely prolong lifespans, as in WORLD and BOAT. I thought the periodical rejuvenation (every 40 years?) required in FLAG more likely. But I'm skeptical about lifespans in good health longer than 110-30 years.
Ad astra! Sean
"endless time in which to perform any given task"
But lack of aging still leaves one with life being ended by some accident *eventually*. IIRC rates of death due to accident or violence give a 1/2 chance of death by somewhat less than 1000 years. I would be glad to have that, but realize that doesn't give me *endless* time.
We will die sometime and the probability of death rises the longer we live? So the Survivors in THE BOAT OF A MILLION YEARS are not going to reconvene after a million years?
Kaor, Jim and Paul!
Jim: Exactly! Even if we could theoretically live a thousand years or more some accident or act of violence will eventually nail us. True, I can see some, like Hugh Valland, beating those odds--but not forever.
Paul: Highly unlikely, and less and less likely if these Survivors had already beaten the odds by living a thousand years or more.
Ad astra! Sean
Actually, prolonging lifespans is currently under active development -- they've already extended the lifespans of mice, who are mammals, for example, by 20 years.
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