X-Message-Number: 19386
Date: Mon, 01 Jul 2002 15:55:44 -0400
From: Robin Helweg-Larsen <>
Subject: cryonics in fiction - Gene Wolfe

Is anyone keeping a list of cryonics-related fiction?  I'd be interested
in seeing it.

I've just discovered a story that was new to me, "The Doctor of Death
Island", in Gene Wolfe's "The Island of Doctor Death and Other Stories
and Other Stories" (yes, he can be very convoluted, and oblique to the
point of incomprehensible, but he's also worth the effort!), Pocket
Books, 1980.  It doesn't say whether any of the stories were published
earlier or not.

Excerpt:

'Albany, NY (AP)  The State Board of Correction disclosed today that
Alan Alvard had become the first prisoner in U.S. penal history to
undergo cryogenic freezing.  Alvard's attorneys successfully contended
that since he could afford the process and was suffering a terminal
illness, to deny it would constitute a de facto sentence of execution,
contrary to the intent of the court.  Alvard, an inventor and publisher,
was given a life sentence two years ago.'

In the mere 40 years he is down (useful for plot purposes) Cell Therapy
has been developed, and they've cured his cancer before he is
'revivified'.  He aches, is tired, looks like hell, his muscles have
atrophied (whether in suspension or in the curative process before
revivification it doesn't say), but his cancer is cured, and, although
there isn't any rejuvenation yet, there is suspension of aging.  It has
a very realistic feel.

Robin HL

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