Latest By
Category:
Armor
Artificial
Intelligence
Biology
Clothing
Communication
Computers
Culture
Data Storage
Displays
Engineering
Entertainment
Food
Input Devices
Lifestyle
Living Space
Manufacturing
Material
Media
Medical
Miscellaneous
Robotics
Security
Space Tech
Spacecraft
Surveillance
Transportation
Travel
Vehicle
Virtual
Person
Warfare
Weapon
Work
"I went back to science fiction to try a few experiments …and my first experiment was a disaster…"
- Alfred Bester
 |
| Anti-agathic drugs | ||
| Drugs that indefinitely postpone death from old age. |
| "...What we want now is something much more direct: an antitoxin against the ageing toxin of humans. We know that the ageing toxin exists in all complex animals. We know that it's a single, specific substance, quite distinct from the poisons that cause the degenerative diseases. And we know that it can be neutralized. When your lab animals were given ascomycin, they didn't develop a single degenerative disease - but they died anyhow, at about the usual time, as if they'd been set, like a clock, at birth...
"So what we're looking for now is not an antibiotic - an anti-life drug - but an anti-agathic, an anti-death drug..." |
| From Cities in Flight,
by James Blish. Published by Avon in 1957 Additional resources -
|
The anti-agathics were part of what made interstellar space flight possible in the novel; the administrators and essential personnel of the cities received the necessary treatments.
Comment/Join this discussion (BACK ON!) ( 0 ) | RSS/XML | Blog This |
Additional
resources:
More Ideas
and Technology from Cities in Flight
More Ideas
and Technology by James Blish
Tech news articles related to Cities in Flight
Tech news articles related to works by James Blish
| Your Own Handheld Biosensor |
| CARMAT Bioprosthetic Total Human Heart Replacement |
| Physical Exam? We've Got Apps |
| Japan's Nursing Home Robot Plan |
Want to Contribute an
Item?
It's easy:
Get the name of the item, a
quote, the book's name and the author's name, and Add
it here.
| <Previous | Next> |
|
|
|
Technovelgy (that's tech-novel-gee!) is devoted to the creative science inventions and ideas of sf authors. Look for the Invention Category that interests you, the Glossary, the Invention Timeline, or see what's New.
|
'Then he saw the geek ... leaning against one of the slender stalks of a sunshade-photocell collector...'
How long ago did Robert Heinlein write about skiing on dry alien worlds?
'There was of course no way of knowing whether you were being watched at any given moment.'
'A cable, here, from the controller to the interface plug... wires from that to the brain.'
'Everything was ready, awaiting the Overlords' pleasure...'
'Five hundred billion gallons worth of Antarctic iceberg had been towed into Santa Monica Bay.'
