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"We are all repositories for genetically-encoded information that we're all spreading back and forth amongst each other, all the time. We're just lousy with information."
- Neal Stephenson
 |
| Sprung-Samser Treatment | ||
| A medical treatment to extend human life. |
As you might guess from the title, this book treats different aspects of how a person might live a long time, as well as what a person might do with a long life.
Conrad Nomikos (who has had a variety of names over the course of his long life) was born long-lived through a (non-natural) mutation. Hasan the Assassin, however, gained his extra years with a special medical treatment.
| Eighty or ninety or more, looking about forty, [Hasan] could still act thirty. the Sprung-Samser treatments had found highly responsive material. It's not often that way. Almost never, in fact. They put some people into accelerated anaphylactic shock for no apparent reason, and even an intracardial blast of adrenalin won't haul them back; others, most others, they freeze at five or six decades. But some rare ones actually grow younger when they take the series - about one in a hundred thousand.
It struck me as odd that in destiny's big shooting gallery this one should make it, in such a big way. |
| Technovelgy from This Immortal,
by Roger Zelazny. Published by Ace Science Fiction in 1965 Additional resources -
|
From immortality granted by the gods to the Fountain of Youth, human beings have been fascinated by how a person might live longer. At the present, the only treatment known to extend life in mammals is an extremely low calorie diet.
It was apparently a series of treatments:
The Sprung-Samser treatments could extend human life to the 150-year range.
Compare to young blood - new blood for old from Methuselah's Children (1941) by Robert Heinlein,
conscious retarded animation from A Race Through Time (1933) by Donald Wandrei, the
anti-Tri-D shot from The Morning of the Day They Did It (1950) by E.B. White and the
anti-agathic drugs from Cities in Flight (1957) by James Blish.
"I've pushed the S-S series about as far as it can go. I fancy I can feel the mainspring winding down now. Maybe it will take a few more windings and maybe it won't...
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Additional
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More Ideas
and Technology from This Immortal
More Ideas
and Technology by Roger Zelazny
Tech news articles related to This Immortal
Tech news articles related to works by Roger Zelazny
Sprung-Samser Treatment-related
news articles:
- Can Sirtuins Block The Aging Process?
| MIT Computerized Bionic Leg Is Part Of The User |
| Bone-Building Drug Evenity Approved |
| BrainBridge Concept Transplant Of Human Head Proposed |
| Natural Gait With Prosthetic Connected To Nervous System |
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'It sounds to me as though you had invented a kind of metal earthworm.'
'I don't have to tell you about the seven two-mile-diameter orbital mirrors that circulate around the satellite, making it habitable.'
'The steel tortoise gave MacKinnon a feeling of Crusoe- like independence.'
'...then back to their work, though little enough it was on these automatic cultivators.'
't came out into plain view. Darkington glimpsed a slim body and six short legs of articulated dull metal.'
'The suit stands up and starts walking, gripping me round the calves and waist, taking the bulk of my weight off my throbbing feet.'
'Internally it’s made up of millions of components, but the most important ones are the thinking and memory parts of the Mind proper.'
