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Ask HN: Which scifi authors to interview about immortality?

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Re: Ask HN: Which scifi authors to interview about immortality?

#51

Post by eesmith »

danieka wrote: post #2

Peter F. Hamilton Besides writing marvelous sci-fi which I would recommend everyone to read, many of his books center around a world where humans rejuvenate. Basically you go to a clinic where your body's age is turned back to whatever age you desire (or maybe a new body is grown, can't remember). When you are there your "brain" (memories, thinking patterns etc) is backed up meaning if you are killed the clinic will…

In reading his stories, I couldn't help but think that either immortality/rejuvenation leads to a very static society, or he has difficulties in trying to think of what a future society might look like.

His stories felt very much like the present, or the near past, projected into the future, with very little change.

This could be deliberate. The some of oldest people are also the richest (including having their own family planet), and least likely to want cultural change. The entire civilization could be bent to their desire to prevent change. But I don't think so. I think he just writes the present into the future.

Of course all authors find it hard to really think about a future culture different than their own. Take Heinlein, whose future worlds are often American pioneer or mid-20th century. But Heinlein added a few things to remind you that it is the future. Kilts are a trend in Methuselah's Children, white gloves for men in Double Star, nail polish for men in Beyond this Horizon, and at the end of Time For The Stars we realize that women throughout the story were always wearing hats, while back on Earth that fad had passed and women had naked heads "like an animal."

While in Pandora's Star and Judas Unchained, the future was now, with a few extra gadgets, and a view of sexism which already feels dated. (I agree with the comment about sexism at https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/149949969?book_show_ac... . And yes, Heinlein's stories were also sexist. I like the description that he write about a future with woman's lib, with women characters as doctors and engineers, but the reality of women's lib was quite different.)

On a technical side-note, the power sources really bug me. There are super-duper capacitors that can be charged over a century in order to change the weather, and incredible power sources that can be surgically embedded in humans so that a fight between two such augmented human ends up knocking down walls, but there are still diesel engines?

Re: Ask HN: Which scifi authors to interview about immortality?

#52

Post by dsr_ »

GeekyBear wrote: post #13

John Varley - His "Eight Worlds" future history has combined the concepts of backing up and restoring human consciousness with cloning a new body to house that consciousness in stories going back to the 70's. Perhaps he would be most famous for his short story "Overdrawn at the Memory Bank" which was dramatized on PBS. This production was later to be soundly mocked during the original run of Mystery Science Theater 3…

And he has a new book coming out in August 2018, so he's probably interested in some publicity.

https://varley.net/nonfiction/news/irontown-blues-blues/

Re: Ask HN: Which scifi authors to interview about immortality?

#53

Post by kieckerjan »

dep_b wrote: post #37

A close related subject is the technological singularity because it would mean we would more or less melt together with technology. People like Ray Kurzweil and the writer Vernor Vinge are famous for this. What broadcasting company is this? VPRO?

I am not supposed to tell (yet). I understand the show might still be canceled and they don´t want people spending eternity waiting for something that doesn't materialize. :)

Re: Ask HN: Which scifi authors to interview about immortality?

#55

Post by steven_noble »

galeforcewinds wrote: post #23

Mr. Bruce Sterling authored "Holy Fire" in 1996, a novel which deals with the topic of radical life extension through a protagonist who is an elderly woman. Contemplative, and a fun read. Were he alive, Jules Verne would have been an excellent choice. Verne's tomb has a statue dedicated to immortality and eternal youth, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jules_Verne#/media/File:Verne_...

+1

Re: Ask HN: Which scifi authors to interview about immortality?

#56

Post by debugloop »

Dennis E. Taylor, mainly for his Bobiverse Series (only thing I've read by him).

I think he's not very well known, but his Triology fits the theme very well: It is about the engineer Bob, who is uploaded as a "replicant" into a spaceship. Humanity mostly wipes it self out using nukes after they got the Bob failsafe away into space, and Bob gets too deal with the remnants of humanity. He replicates himself, too the point that the Bobs can host a Bobmoot and vote on things. Due to being immortal, some Bobs starts calling humans ephemerals, wheras others are offended at the implication that they're not human.

It's a very interesting and entertaining read. I'm also writing this from the top of my head and have only read this triology by him.

Re: Ask HN: Which scifi authors to interview about immortality?

#57

Post by synicalx »

danieka wrote: post #2

Peter F. Hamilton Besides writing marvelous sci-fi which I would recommend everyone to read, many of his books center around a world where humans rejuvenate. Basically you go to a clinic where your body's age is turned back to whatever age you desire (or maybe a new body is grown, can't remember). When you are there your "brain" (memories, thinking patterns etc) is backed up meaning if you are killed the clinic will…

Favourite author by a long shot, but I wish he'd give the endless sex scenes a rest. We can do a space opera without his weird fantasies about zero-G boning with a space princess.

Also Pandora's Star and Judas Unchained are fantastic, towards the second half of JU I could not put it down - literally took a day off work to finish it.

Re: Ask HN: Which scifi authors to interview about immortality?

#58

Post by icebraining »

logfromblammo wrote: post #21
goatlover wrote: post #6

Ferrett Steinmetz His book The Uploaded deals with the consequences of a world where the dying are granted digital immortality in a fantasy filled utopian adventure, but they still get to vote. The real world is falling apart, few people care about their bodily existence, looking for any excuse to die, and the uploaded have all the political power.

That brings to mind a short story where only those under a certain age were allowed to vote or hold political offices or command position, while the clinically immortal elders were still allowed to have advisor and observer roles. It might have been the one with the baby-eaters, but I can't recall now. It also brings to mind the Futurama where Prof. Farnsworth ages out and is forced to move to the retirement planet.…

Jonathan Swift wrote masterfully about that in Gulliver's Travels (1726), which is one of best SF works ever written, in my opinion. He describes a nation in which some people are born immortal (called the struldbrug):

As soon as they have completed the term of eighty years, they are looked on as dead in law; their heirs immediately succeed to their estates; only a small pittance is reserved for their support; and the poor ones are maintained at the public charge. After that period, they are held incapable of any employment of trust or profit; they cannot purchase lands, or take leases; neither are they allowed to be witnesses in any cause, either civil or criminal, not even for the decision of meers (metes) and bounds.

Re: Ask HN: Which scifi authors to interview about immortality?

#60

Post by WorkLobster »

eesmith wrote: post #51
danieka wrote: post #2

Peter F. Hamilton Besides writing marvelous sci-fi which I would recommend everyone to read, many of his books center around a world where humans rejuvenate. Basically you go to a clinic where your body's age is turned back to whatever age you desire (or maybe a new body is grown, can't remember). When you are there your "brain" (memories, thinking patterns etc) is backed up meaning if you are killed the clinic will…

In reading his stories, I couldn't help but think that either immortality/rejuvenation leads to a very static society, or he has difficulties in trying to think of what a future society might look like. His stories felt very much like the present, or the near past, projected into the future, with very little change. This could be deliberate. The some of oldest people are also the richest (including having their own f…

I think you may have picked up on something there, talking about a "static society". I remember reading a comment from Hamilton at one point (possibly in the fore/afterword?) that the goal of the Night's Dawn trilogy was to write about a society so stable and stagnant that change has to be forced upon it from without. And while the Commonwealth saga may not have shared the same explicit premise, there were definite parallels.
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