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.
21 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.
"We will die sometime and the probability of death rises the longer we live?"
That sentence is ambiguous. So I will try to clarify
Assume the probability of death is the same for any year:
Then the chances of surviving X years is less than surviving Y years if X>Y.
This would be precisely the same math as the decay of a radioactive isotope, with a half-life for the people born in any year. If the probability of death per year is such that the chance of living to 1000 is 1/2 then the chance of living to 2000 is 1/4 and the chance of living to 3000 is 1/8 etc.
That assumption is highly doubtful.
With no aging people who like risky activities would have a higher death rate, so as time passes they would eliminate themselves and the probability of death for people born in a given year drops.
OTOH perhaps people who have lived many centuries will be bored with things they have done many times before & the only things left to do are more risky than the things they have done, so the chance of dying for the older ones will rise.
With aging in the current human population the chance of death in a given year rises with age and approaches 1 as age gets much more than 100 years. Anything that slows aging will keep that chance of death per year from rising as fast so maximum age at death will increase.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
I fear my unhappy experience with cervical myelopathy in 2022 has made me jaundiced about efforts to seriously extend human lifespans. But I'm glad it might someday be possible for people to live about 110-30 years.
I do think many of the claims/speculations examined by Chip Walter in his book IMMORTALITY, INC. which I read in 2022 too hard to believe.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean: well, our understanding of biology is improving rapidly.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
That's good, of course. Possibly such research will benefit even old codgers like us.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean: I've often said that I expect to die 3 weeks before immortality is announced... 8-).
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
Haaaaaaaa!!! I did have that idea in the back of my mind as well. (Smiles wryly)
Ad astra! Sean
When my. mother was dying, she said: "I've done what I wanted to do and gone the places I wanted to go, I've never had to bury any of my children and I've seen my grandchildren. I'm old, I'm tired and I'm ready to go."
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
And that's an honorable, admirable, worthy, and understandable attitude of your mother. Memory eternal!
Ad astra! Sean
Yes, she was always brave and clear-headed.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
Good! I've even wondered if you modeled Sir Nigel Loring's formidable Edwardian grandmother on your mother, for your Emberverse books.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean: a bit! Now, -her- mother, my grandmother, was thoroughly useless -- her only major contribution was being a VAD nurse in WW1. But I've seen pictures of her as a young woman, and she was massively gorgeous.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
I thought so, re that "bit."
I fear many men, simply because of being males, might not mind a woman being "thoroughly useless" as long as she was "massively gorgeous"!
Ad astra! Sean
Well, my grandfather on my mother's side met her when she was a VAD nurse. OTOH, she turned household management over to my mother when my mother was 11...
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
And that's far too young even for an intelligent child to have to manage household bills, weekly shopping, or the more difficult household chores.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean: they had servants (in Peru) so her job was supervising the servants.
In fact, she told me that mostly meant hanging out with the cook's daughters in the kitchen. She certainly became a very good cook, in the Peruvian style.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
Good, that's better than what I thought was the case. What your mother did was to make lists of what needed to be done.
Ad astra! Sean
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