X-Message-Number: 9964
Date: Thu, 2 Jul 1998 14:00:28 -0400 (EDT)
From: Charles Platt <>
Subject: Frederik Pohl

One more observation (following Steve Bridge's post yesterday) re Fred 
Pohl and his odd history with cryonics.

I've known Pohl on and off for almost 30 years, through the
science-fiction fraternity. At a writers/editors meeting in New York,
about five years ago, I pinned him down for about 20 minutes and demanded
a straight answer about his equivocation re cryonics. He gave me a
succession of excuses, of which "I'll wake up and my friends will be dead"
was just one. In fact, he gave EVERY standard reason for not signing up.
Since I had heard all of these reasons before, I was able to provide a
rebuttal in each case. 

Finally, Fred ran out of reasons and was thoughtful for a moment. Then he
shook his head and said something like, "Well, I have to admit your
arguments make sense.  But, there's something about the idea of cryonics
... I just don't like it." 

That's the phrase that really sticks in my mind. "I just don't like it."

Of course, this is an argument that has no rebuttal. I laughed, wished 
him well, and we haven't communicated on this topic since.

Some may wonder how a man who was one of the first published advocates of
cryonics, in the 1960s, could "turn against" the idea. But I think this
misreads the situation. As a science-fiction writer or "futurist" Pohl was
quite accustomed to playing with ideas about the future. Cryonics was just
another idea in his arsenal, and he could see that it passed the "science
fiction plausibility test." So, when he was still relatively young and
faced a very small risk of death, he advocated it--for other people, of
course. 

But a concept that is fun to play with can seem very different when you
apply it to yourself in real life. Cryonics in real life is no fun at all.
It involves nightmarish medical procedures (such as decapitation, in some
cases) and requires a massive rethink of fundamental lifelong assumptions. 

Incidentally, I went through a conversation with another science-fiction
writer, Joe Haldeman, that was almost identical to my conversation with
Fred Pohl. This was especially ironic since it was Haldeman's impulsive
decision to visit to Alcor, almost a decade ago, that resulted indirectly
in my own involvement with cryonics. 

Joe supplied the usual long list of reasons not to sign up, plus one that 
I had never heard before. "I know what it's like to be in pain," he said, 
referring to the machine-gun bullet wound that he sustained in Vietnam. 
"I think being resuscitated could be very painful."

I pointed out that this was a ludicrous argument. Any future technology 
capable of repairing freezing damage will certainly be able to suppress 
the perception of pain, presumably on a neuron-by-neuron basis. The fact 
that a smart guy with a strong science background and a lifelong habit of 
speculating about the future would come up with an argument like this 
suggested to me that he was evading the real issues, whatever they might 
be. Anyway, finally Joe Haldeman said the same thing as Fred Pohl: "I 
just don't like the idea."

If we include James Halperin as a science-fiction writer, and if I include
myself (even though I haven't written science fiction in several years),
we still have a total of just THREE science-fiction writers who have
signed up for cryonics, so far as I know. Thus, the profession that you
might imagine would be the most fertile ground for cryonicists has turned
out to be quite disappointing. I conclude that people who like to play
with speculative concepts are no more willing to _live_ those concepts
than anyone else. Indeed, they may be less willing. 

--Charles Platt
CryoCare Foundation

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