Solutions That Are Problems/Problematic Solutions

Poul Anderson, "Time Heals" IN Anderson, Dialogue With Darkness (New York, February 1985), pp. 165-191.

I will summarize what I remember from a White Hart story by Arthur C. Clarke, then show how this applies to "Time Heals." In Clarke's story:

a guy snores so loudly that he wakes up everyone else in the house;

someone cures him of snoring by curing him of sleeping so that he becomes a 24/7 insomiac;

tiring of this, he asks to be put back to sleep;

he is then put into such a deep sleep that it becomes suspended animation;

he winds up in a bed in a shop window to advertise the bed.

In Anderson's story:

Hart has cancer so he goes into temporal stasis - "'...in a level-entropy field...'" (p. 166) - until a cure is found;

however, by then, society has changed so much that he cannot adjust to it and becomes catatonic;

he is returned to stasis but, since society no longer has any mental diseases and therefore also has no curative techniques, it will be a long time, if ever, before he can be taken back out of stasis and by then society will have changed even more so that he will be even less likely to be able to adjust. 

There is more to be said about this story but in another post.