Wells' When The Sleeper Wakes, about suspended animation, was serialized in The Graphic in 1899.
Anderson's "Time Heals," about temporal stasis, was published in Astounding Science Fiction in 1949.
Heinlein's The Door Into Summer, about both suspended animation and time travel, was serialized in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction in 1956.
(Both The Door Into Summer and Anderson's first story about Nicholas van Rijn, "Margin of Profit," were published in late 1956 when I was in my first term at a Scottish boarding school. In a science fictional future, I write about these works on a world-wide web of computers in 2026.)
The Sleeper's inherited wealth has been put into a trust that has become the basis of the world order.
In "Time Heals," Hart has invested all his money before going into temporal stasis. That money does not survive historical changes but, in 2837/2841, he avails of free public transport and an unlimited government credit card.
In The Door Into Summer, Dan Davis had lived in Connecticut, recalling the title of Mark Twain's time travel novel. Insurance companies promoting suspended animation give away free copies of Wells' book and Davis knows all about compound interest and stock appreciation. People with incurable diseases go into suspended animation as they had gone into temporal stasis in "Time Heals."
We can also list one time travel novel by each of these three authors:
7 comments:
Poul understood that cultural change made people from earlier periods feel alienated. Wells didn't quite understand that.
Kaor, Paul and Mr. Stirling!
Paul: I have some doubts that investments placed in trust for persons in stasis or suspended animation for their future benefit would survive long enough for that. Because human affairs are so chaotic that anything might cause those investments to be lost.
I also thought of ORBIT UNLIMITED, where suspended animation/cryonics were used for transporting the exiled Constitutionalists from Earth to Rustum via STL tech.
Mr. Stirling: I agree. I remember how "lost" Hart was in "Time Heals."
Ad astra! Sean
Contact with alien cultures (real or in books) drives that home. I spent my teenage years in Africa, and got that lesson.
Also, it was an education in basics. I walked past dead and dying famine victims when I was ten years old, for example.
I remember coming back to North America in my late teens, and after about a month I looked around at my classmates and thought: "What a bunch of wimps!"
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
One unfortunate side effect of living in tolerably stable and prosperous Western societies is how we can take our good fortune too much granted, becoming convinced it's the natural and permanent order of things. It's not, such stability and prosperity is precarious and is always at risk, both from self inflicted folly and outside attacks. And I know that not from personal experience (unlike you) but only from some knowledge of history. There's never going to be a permanently prosperous and ideal society, Utopian foolishness I dismiss.
Ad astra! Sean
Disagree.
(Although our peace and stability is currently very vulnerable to the actions of our own rulers.)
Sean,
People who disagree with you are not fools. They just disagree with you.
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
True, sometimes they become monsters like Robespierre, Lenin, Stalin, Hitler, Mao, Pol Pot, et al.
Peace and stability are always at risk because of how chaotic, flawed, fallible, strife prone, etc., all human beings are. Not just "rulers."
Ad astra! Sean
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