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" I sometimes suspect that we're seeing something in the Internet as significant as the birth of cities. It's really something new, it's a new kind of civilization."
- William Gibson
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| Young-Forever | ||
| A very particular formula for human immortality, which solves the most serious attendant problem (population explosion). |
As those who read speculative fiction know, one of the scarier results of widespread anti-geriatric drugs or remedies is overpopulation. Niven finds a unique way around this particular problem in A World Out of Time.
| Earth was ruled by children, twenty billion children aged from eleven years to enormous. "It was young-forever that did it. The State had discovered an ideal form of young-forever," the old woman said. "Parents can see to it that their children stop growing older at an age just below - what is your word? When girls begin their cycle of blood - " "Puberty." "Just before puberty, they are stopped. They live nearly forever. There is no resultant rise in numbers, because these Children do not have children. The method was far better than the older method of staying young forever." |
| From A World Out of Time,
by Larry Niven. Published by Random House in 1976 Additional resources -
|
Naturally, Corbell (the protagonist of the novel), an old-fashioned 20th century human) would like to have the old method of staying young forever.
In the future society, it turned out the Girls and Boys had relatively little in common, and never found a reason to come together.
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Tech news articles related to works by Larry Niven
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| NextSense Earbuds Spy On Your Brain |
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"We had leisure to make a thorough observation of the hidden side of earth's satellite."
'... iron tubes... the ends of the tubes were joined to each other...to preserve it from the action of the seawater.'
'Mr. Garden, you are in no condition to drive....'
'A cable, here, from the controller to the interface plug... wires from that to the brain.'
'The slender stalks of a sunshade-photocell collector...'
'Holodeck 4 was waiting to be programmed...'
