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"Science fiction and science have always danced around each other. Science fiction is the subconscious of science."
- Greg Bear
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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 Girs and Boys had relatively little in common, and never found a reason to come together.
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| Handheld Human Skin Printer |
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'The car surged and lifted, clearing its top by a negligible margin.'
Science fiction authors are serious about sleep, too.
'I had explained," said Nessus, "that our civilisation was dying in its own waste heat.'
'Just what did I want Flexible Frank to do? - any work a human being does around a house.'
SF writers have thought about this since the 19th century.
There's a lesson in this for neural net AI engineers everywhere.
