X-Message-Number: 5974
From:  (Steven B. Harris/Virginia George )
Newsgroups: sci.cryonics
Subject: Re: Larry Niven and Bryonics
Date: 18 Mar 1996 07:13:27 GMT
Message-ID: <4ij2en$>
References: <> <>

In <>  writes: 

>
>John de Rivaz <> writes:
> 
>>"Age of the Pussyfoot" concerning cryonics, but he failed to accept the 
>>offer of a free suspension when made by Alcor staff some years back and is 
>>now annihilated.
> 
>   Yes, I remember reading of that. Damn shame. I vaguely remember a 70's
>article in Penthouse (don't have the issue, read it while waiting in a
>barber shop) where, after making arguments against cryonics, Asimov also
>made it clear in the end that he didn't want it for himself, even if it
>did work. The last words of the story still stick in my mind: "As for
>myself, I prefer oblivion."

Yeah, Asimov was pretty socialistic. Half his fiction involves people 
apologizing for their long lives, or else getting some project finally 
up and going by dying and decomposing.  

I personally sent Asimov at his home address in NY, a full package of 
cryonics material 6 months before he died.  At this time, he was sick 
and could not work, but was able to still think.  He didn't think hard 
enough.  His last words as he went into final shock at the end were: "I 
want...Isaac Asimov."  I assume he meant the old Isaac Asimov, polymath. 
I don't think he liked his mind and his identity being squinched off 
slowly into nothingness, when it finally got down to it.  But by that 
time he had no choice.

I'm always amazed at the scientific socialist-atheist types like Sagan 
and Asimov who will go on and on about mankind, and how individuals are 
less important, and yet when it comes time for the end of their own 
lives, will have bypasses and more bypasses, and bone marrow 
transplants, and so on and so on.  You'd think that minds of this 
caliber would be smart enough to see the contradiction.  At least Albert 
Einstein at the end told his surgeons all to go away, and leave him 
alone with his GR calculations, to die in peace if that was what was 
going to happen.  Which it did.  

>   Anyone know if there are any SF writers (besides Charles Platt) who have
>made suspension arrangements, and have gone public with the fact? (I gather
>Arthur Clarke is sympathetic to the idea, but I don't know if he'll do it hif

I don't.  I know one famous one who has done it in private, though.
We'll have SF writers doing it in public soon enough. 

                                 Steve Harris, M.D.


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