X-Message-Number: 2078 Date: 07 Apr 93 17:28:17 EDT From: Charles Platt <> Subject: CRYONICS Cryonics in Science Fiction To: Cryonet April 7, 1993 Steve Jackson asks if there is or has been a catalogue of science fiction stories/novels using cryonics as a theme. Consulting THE ENCYCLOPEDIA OF SCIENCE FICTION (edited by Nicholls and Clute, published 1979, new edition due later this year) I find there is, in fact, an entry under Cryonics, written by Brian Stableford (a British bibliophile), correctly attributing the term "cryonics" to one-time CSNY member Karl Werner. Stableford picks out these landmarks in cryonics fiction (capitalized titles are books, titles in quotes are short stories): THE FROZEN PIRATE by W. Clark Russell (1887). A shipwrecked man builds a fire on an icebound pirate ship and inadvertantly revives one of its crewmen. 10,000 YEARS IN A BLOCK OF ICE by Louis Boussenard (1889, trans. 1898). A man is revived in the future after being accidentally frozen. "The Resurrection of Jimber Jaw" by Edgar Rice Burroughs (1937). Satirical account of the resuscitation of a prehistoric man and his experiences in the civilized world. NOTES FROM THE FUTURE by Nikolai Amosov (1967, USSR; trans. 1970). FREEZING DOWN by Anders Bodelsen (1969, Denmark; trans. 1971). WHY CALL THEM BACK FROM HEAVEN by Clifford D. Simak (1967), foresees the possibility that a man might be accused of murder as a result of delaying the freezing of a person who is "dead" by old-fashioned parameters. "The Defenseless Dead" by Larry Niven (1973), portraying cryonic patients as an exploitable resource. ABSOLUTE ZERO by Ernest Tidyman (1971), a satirical thriller in which a financier, whose parents are frozen in a blizzard, is motivated to create a large cryonics industry. THE AGE OF THE PUSSYFOOT by Frederik Pohl (1969), using cryonics as a form of time travel. LOOKING BACKWARD FROM THE YEAR 2000 by Mack Reynolds (1973), again, cryonics as time travel. THE DREAM MILLENNIUM by James White (1974), explores psychological effects of freezing/resuscitation. The encyclopedia also includes a longish entry under the heading IMMORTALITY, again written by Brian Stableford, in which we find references to fiction which tackles the general theme without specifically using cryonics as the method of preservation. Here we find, for example: GULLIVER'S TRAVELS by Jonathan Swift (1726) MELMOTH THE WANDERER by Charles Maturin (1820) SHE by H. Rider Haggard (1887) BACK TO METHUSELAH by George Bernard Shaw (1921) "The Jameson Satellite" by Neil R. Jones (1931, the story that inspired Robert Ettinger) TO LIVE FOREVER by Jack Vance (1956) DRUNKARD'S WALK by Frederik Pohl (1960) WAY STATION by Clifford D. Simak (1963) THIS IMMORTAL by Roger Zelazny (1966) BUG JACK BARRON by Norman Spinrad (1969) TIME ENOUGH FOR LOVE by Robert A. Heinlein (1973) This may seem like a lot of material. Bear in mind, however, that it is a tiny list compared to the number of novels written around concepts such as time travel or telepathy. The fact is, immortality/cryonics has not been a popular theme in fiction, just as it is not a popular endeavor in real life. I also find it interesting that, while a few authors have tackled cryonics/immortality as the major theme of an individual novel, it has hardly ever appeared as a minor theme. In other words, the subject does not crop up as part of the scenery in the consensual science-fictional vision of the future, shared by many different authors. By comparison, faster-than-light travel crops up in literally tens of thousands of stories and novels, even though it is arguably less plausible than immortality/cryonics. I think the main reason for this is laziness. It's easy to describe someone riding in a faster-than-light space vehicle (very little different from riding in an airplane). It's much harder to visualize an entire society with the cryonics/immortality component changing many fundamental aspects of the human condition. Moreover, when the human condition has been substantially revised in this way, it's harder for the author to create characters whom we can readily identify with. All of this leads me to a conclusion which I have reached many times over the years: conceptually, science fiction is more comfortable playing the literary equivalent of action- packed video games than tackling serious questions about human transcendence. Thus even in this area of supposedly unfettered speculation, we tend to find the same resistance to "selling" the serious prospect of longevity as we find when trying to "sell" the real-life concept of cryonics. --Charles Platt [ Charles, Stableford apparently missed Heinlein's "Door Into Summer". Wasn't that the story with a cryonics organization in Riverside? - KQB ] Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=2078