X-Message-Number: 515
Date: Wed, 30 Oct 91 00:52:17 CST
From:  (Steve Jackson)
Subject: Re: Scary Story
 
    I don't think that the "scary story" was presented as something that
needed refutation, and I don't think it deserved a hostile reply. I
found it amusing.
        It's a legitimate sort of cautionary tale, too. Let's admit
that we should work now for the type of social structure that will
protect the rights of the suspended.
        There have been a number of interesting cryonic-related stories.
Someone out there must have done a literature survey already - I'd
like to see it. I can think offhand of two other authors who make the
same point - that the frozen would be defenseless in the face of a
hostile society - at greater length. Larry Niven depicts a world in
which the State treats "corpsicles" as a disposable resource. T. J.
Bass, in "Half Past Human," shows an ever-increasing backlog of the
frozen, in a future with no incentive ever to restore anyone. 
        I would far rather read stories like this, suggesting problems
and inspiring me to think of countermeasures, than sugar-coated
depictions of how we were all thawed out and lived happily forever after.
That stuff has little educational value except in the sense that it's
pro-cryonics propaganda. Those of us who are already convinced can learn
more from the scary stories.

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