"'We've sense enough - or humility enough, if you like that better - to know that we can't adapt men to a planet like Jupiter...'"
-James Blish, "Surface Tension" IN Blish, The Seedling Stars (London, 1972), pp. 107-180 AT p. 109.
However, in the stories in question, Anderson and Simak had still been thinking of Jupiter merely as a bigger planet with a solid surface whereas Blish was working with the updated idea of a "gas giant," a large planet with a turbulent atmosphere merely densening but never solidifying all the way down to the eventual planetary core.
Sf writers discuss the same questions but give different answers:
Heinlein's Howard Families breed for longevity;
Blish's characters say that this is impossible but develop antiagathic drugs;
Anderson has antisenescence in the Technic History, anti-aging treatment in the Time Patrol and three different kinds of immortality in other works.
7 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
I can believe it might be possible to someday moderately prolong human lifespans. Either to an average age of 110 using Technic antisenescence or to about age 130, as in in the HARVEST OF STARS books. But the "immortality" seen in WORLD WITHOUT STARS, requiring only a single one time only treatment, is harder to believe.
In WORLD WITHOUT STARS (and in "Pact" and FOR LOVE AND GLORY) Anderson hypothesized humans would suffer from dementia due to memory overload after less than 1000 years. A problem requiring treatment via removal of excess memories. I thought this very plausible till Stirling argued such meditechnic interventions would not be necessary due to humans simply forgetting unused/unneeded memories. Maybe, I don't know which of these writers might be right.
Ad astra! Sean
Kaor, Paul!
I should have added some comments about THE BOAT OF A MILLION YEARS. I recall Hanno telling Rufus in "The Comrade" chapter how he went thru a period of dementia for about half a century. Apparently, he and the other "immortals" who survived these bouts of insanity recovered sanity by forgetting/self-editing unneeded memories.
Hanno & Co. survived because they also had the good luck to fall into the hands of people who took care of them during these periods of madness. Probably by some of their children/grandchildren.
Ad astra! Sean
Kaor, Paul!
Iow, in BOAT, we see Anderson at least considering something like what Stirling argued for.
Ad astra! Sean
Some treatment that repairs aging damage every so often as in 'For Love and Glory' sounds more plausible to me than a one time treatment that ends aging as in 'World Without Stars'.
In 'WWS' the treatment is every few decades. At least as plausible is every year or some drug taken daily with checkups on how well they are working done every few months.
Your first sentence, I agree. Those age damaging repairs seen in FLAG seem to be necessary every 40 years.
But I think you meant FLAG as well in your second sentence. WORLD WITHOUT STARS has a one time, no need to repeat antiagathic treatment.
Ad astra! Sean
Correct. I mistyped.
Some sort of quite frequent repair of aging damage seems more likely to me to work.
Kaor, Jim!
I certainly don't object to some kind of repeatable meditechnic treatment repairing damage due to age. I'm more doubtful that it will ever be a reality.
Ad astra! Sean
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