Conference noted::sf

Better medicine, of course, will fix more of the things that break as 
you get older.  Better medicine includes replacing organs with 
new biological or mechanical parts.  Eventually, though, the chassis 
will wear out.  It's hard to keep even simple mechanical things like 
cars and planes going for more than a couple of decades, much less bodies.

At that point you've got to start over fresh. Make a tape of your soul
(or whatever else you consider to contain your "youness") and play it
into a blank body.  If the body has to start from infancy in order to 
gain the proper coordination, then that's a price your adult soul has 
to pay.  A twenty year vacation once every few centuries is not too
bad.

At some point your soul wears out too.  You start forgetting things 
that are important to you, just because you no longer have room in 
your memories.  Old activities no longer have much interest just 
because you've done them so often before.  A character like Lazarus 
Long who keeps doing the same things over and over again (siring 
more children, founding more colonies, evading more bureaucrats) is 
trapped in a peculiar form of hell.  Only by forgetting that he's 
done it all before could he stay sane. 

There is an infinite universe of experience, of course, but a human
being is finite and can only appreciate or enjoy a small range of it.
After that point you either give up and die, or expand your consciousness
by joining a collective pool of other souls.  In any case you no
longer exist as a separate entity. 

/jlr

    At the moment, there is no agreed-on theory of the cause of aging.
    If there were, we would probably hear a whole lot about efforts
    to control it.  There are two general categories of aging theory.
    One is that we are specifically designed to die after X amount of
    time, and the other is that we just wear out in some way.  Under
    one category, there have been several self-destruct mechanisms put
    forward; under the other, there have been several descriptions of
    what wears out and how.
    
    However, there is probably a fairly simple cause of aging.  The
    evidence for that is the existence of a rare and bizarre disease
    called progeria.  Victims of progeria age with grotesque rapidity
    and are little old men and women by the age of eight or ten.  There
    have only been a few cases, but the fact that there have been ANY
    indicates that aging is caused by a relatively small number of things
    happening.
    
    Progeria doesn't let you decide between self-destruct and wearing,
    though.  The victims may have a mis-set self-destruct timer, or
    they may wear out unusually fast thorugh lack of self-repair or
    through some other complication that damages in the same way aging
    does, only faster.
    
    Earl Wajenberg

    Then there are the social consequences of rejuvenation.  Considering
    the following choices.
    
    Either lots of people can have rejuvenation, or only a few.
    
    If only a few, there will probably be massive resentment of the
    immortals by the mortals.  The immortals will either have to go
    into hiding or put down rebellions.  If they go into hiding, they
    could continue as a secret elite for a long time.  "Drunkard's Walk"
    was based on this idea, sort of.
    
    If they put down rebellions, this implies they are in positions
    of power.  (Highly likely.  If rejuvenation is available only to
    a few, it will probably be the upper classes.)  If they can keep
    the mortals in their place for a couple of generations, then the
    new generations of mortals will proabbly get used to the immortal
    elite, things will settle down, and the society in question becomes
    monolithically stable.
    
    If rejuvenation is made available to all, there MUST be strict
    population control, or there is a rapid population explosion and
    the rejuvenation techniques vanish in the plagues and famines that
    follow.
    
    In a stable society with common rejuvenation, how many kids anyone
    has is everybody's business.  Also, I strongly suspect that social
    change and scientific progress would slow down to glacial creeping,
    since there would be a drastic shortage of new minds replacing old
    ones in all fields.  On the other hand, the glacial creep would
    be irrelevant in a sense, since the general time-scale would have
    expanded proportionally.
    
    Earl Wajenberg

    One of the more interesting theories of aging I've heard was one
    based on information theory.  
    
    The basic idea's this: the weay we get new cells is by replication
    of old cells.  Now the replication can be viewed as a message
    transmission/reception.  Each subsequent replication is the
    transmission and reception of a [genetic] message.  After sufficient
    replications, noise starts getting into the signal.  That starts
    the onset of aging (incomplete replications).
    
    Interesting on two counts: one is that it sort of fits the "built
    in" model; the other is that be some (biochemical?) means of negative
    feedback, it's theoretically correctable.
    
    Steve Kallis, Jr.
    

re: .4

How is different from the replication which takes place in the womb, or in
making the sperm/eggs?

Jim.

    re .5:  
    
    If I understand your question correctly, the replication in the
    womb is of a _new_ being.  Eggs are made all at once and are dropped
    periodically.  Sperm are recycled (unless being used) by reabsorption.
    
    The cells being replicated are of individual tissues (hair, bone,
    bloosd) rather than the whole being.  Further down in the granularity,
    so to speak.
    
    Steve Kallis, Jr.
    

        One of the first objections here was that "even machines
        wear out".  Invalid: the human body is perfectly capable
        of self regeneration and repair, and we grow new cells to
        replace old cells all along, from the time we're born.
        
        RNA supposedly gets worn out, and cells cease to reproduce
        accurately.  Humans do not repair or replace nerve tissue
        well, and brain tissue in particular is not replaced at all.
        Yet the cells still wear out and die continuously.  Even
        so, we use a minute fraction of the total capacity of the
        brain (conceivably to make up for it's not being regenerated),
        and so you can get by quite well for your "appointed time".
        
        Other animals do well at regenerating, including nerve tissue.
        Granted that their nervous systems are less complex than
        ours, but there's not that much basic difference in the cells
        themselves, that I know of.  If a planeria can grow a whole
        new brain, I see no theoretical reason why we should be
        incapable of doing so.
        
        Similarly, we can't regenerate limbs... but many other animals
        can, quite readily.  Even routinely.  While most people grow
        only two sets of teeth, there are documented cases of people
        who have grown 3 or even more to replace lost adult teeth.
        
        The memory storage problem is interesting, though.  Assuming
        we figured out how to teach our bodies to repair themselves
        effectively, we might live forever.  Would we ever actually
        exceed the storage capacity of our brains?  We really don't
        even know how memory is stored.  How many neurons does it
        take?  Or is it even analogous to any storage mechanism we
        know of so far?  Perhaps, our brains are quite capable of
        virtually infinite information storage.  Even if not, the
        capacity is probably quite a bit more than one can accumulate
        in a hundred years or so.  Maybe after a thousand or so,
        you'll do an image backup to tape, and start deleting all
        the files you haven't accessed for, say, a few hundred years,
        or that you have no interest in.  And you'll be good for
        another thousand or so, with all the stuff still off-line
        somewhere where you can look it up if you need it.
        
        Why not?
        
        	/dave

The following is a wild, off the cuff rambling.  I don't know nothing about
this kinda good stuff - but...
                                    
I've heard a theory that memory is retained throughout the whole brain. If you
take a brain that has had some damage, and "write" a memory to it, might the
storage scheme for this memory be dependent upon the dead spots that existed at
that time?  (Kinda like using bad blocks to piracy protect your software...)
So if you go and regenerate or replace the blank spots, that memory might be
wiped out or altered... 

Just a thought I had while perusing the reply asking about theoretical reasons
we might not be able to regenerate our brains.  Maybe that planaria is a
whole different individual after the brain grows back!  Emulating such a
process wouldn't do ME a lot of good!

- Chris

    How does DNA replication differ in germ cells and somatic cells?
    If aging is caused by accumulated "noise" in the DNA, you'd think
    that each family line would "age" too, and at pretty much the same
    rate as an individual.  This would quickly result in extinction.
    
    If aging is caused by the build-up of DNA copy errors, there must
    be some way to eliminate them to avoid aging of bloodlines.  Either
    that or ova that chance to have too many errors simply fail to develop.
    
    I'd still expect a special error-detecting rejection mechanism to
    avoid aging bloodlines.
    
    On coping with rejuvenation:  I think Arthur Clarke invented a good
    mechanism in "Against the Fall of Night" (or "The City and the Stars"
    -- another version of the same story and I keep muddling them).
    In this story, whichever one it was, aging individuals went through
    and edited their memories of all the dull and/or traumatic stuff
    they didn't want.  They then were recorded down to the last atom
    by the city computer, getting disintegrated in the process.  At
    a random time in the future, the computer reconstructed them but
    with a block on their memories.  They were adopted by a pair of
    foster parents and raised like children to the age of 20 or so,
    when their memories started coming back.  They now had continuity
    with their past, but a new perspective, new interests, new friends.
    It was the best handling of endless youth I've seen.  But I think
    it would work just as well without the trip through the memory bank.
    A case of artificial amnesia and relocating to the home of the foster
    parents is all that's crucial to the process.
    
    Earl Wajenberg

                       -< Correcting Errors in genes >-
    re. 9
    
    >    How does DNA replication differ in germ cells and somatic cells?
    
    There is, as far as I know, no difference between the way DNA
    replication occurs in germ cells and somatic cells.  The two strands
    unwind and each exposed base on the strand is matched by a
    complementary base.  Errors in the pairing of bases are a source
    of mutations, but cells have mechanisms for repairing the damage.
    
    Not all of the damage is detected by a cell's repair mechanisms.
    This is especially true when the damage occurs faster than the repairs
    can be made (eg. during period of intense radiation or exposure
    to DNA damaging chemicals).  This is one of the ways in which cancer
    is caused.  Preventing and curing cancer thus becomes of major
    importance when longevity is increased.
    
    If genetic damage occurs to germ cells,  The resulting mutations
    have a chance to be passed on to subsequent generations.  This is
    prevented by the fact that most changes to genetic material have
    no effect (by being repaired or by causing no functionall changes)
    or have a lethal effect on following generations.
    
    As I said before, the replication of DNA is the same in germ and
    somatic cells.  The distribution of the DNA, however, is different.
    Each germ cell (ie. egg and sperm) have half the genetic material
    as a somatic (tissue) cell.  When egg and sperm combine, the correct
    amount of genetic material is restored.  If a gene in one of the
    germ cells is damaged, then sometimes the damage can be repaired
    using the corresponding information from the other cell.
    
    If the damage persists (and is harmful) the resulting embryo is
    often spontaneously aborted (this is another example of genetic
    editing).  Non-lethal mutations do get passed on and add to the
    genetic diversity of the species.
    
    All this may or may not be helpful to anyone who's reading this.
    If not, then let me know and I'll see if I can discuss a different
    aspect of the question.

	Thanks,

	 /~~'\
	W o o k
	(  ^  )
	 \`-'/
	  \_/
    

    The world of J.R.R. Tolkien provides another example of eternal
    life: his Elves.
    
    His answer to the population problem is to tie longevity to decreased
    fecundity.  As a whole, the concept is biologically sound.  The
    trend in nature seems to be that the longer the lifespan, the less
    frequently offspring are produced.  I don't mean to say that this
    is the only factor.  Certainly the degree of predation and the
    availability of resources are also factors, but the elves seem to
    fit those constraints as well.
    
    It also seems that the elves matured more slowly.  This would provide
    the benefit of giving their cells a greater opportunity to repair
    genetic damage (re .10). (How's that for mixing science and fantasy!)
    It doesn't really explain why they reproduce more slowly, though.

	Thanks,

	 /~~'\
	W o o k
	(  ^  )
	 \`-'/
	  \_/
    

        .8: Obviously if you regenerate your entire brain (or even
        a significant chunk of it), you won't be "the same person".
        This could be mitigated by superimposing your old memories
        (if they could be recovered from backup) at some point in
        the future, assuming the "new you" desired to do so.  There
        is, at least, a greater chance for continuity than if you
        *didn't* regenerate, so I suspect people would be willing
        to risk the change in identity.
        
        However, it's rarely necessary to regenerate one's entire
        brain.  I mean, how often have *you* been decapitated recently?
        In practise, regeneration of brain tissue would mean replacing
        the neurons which die routinely, every day.  Certainly, that
        means that to some extent each day you are a "different person",
        but in that sense how much difference is there between having
        new neurons and simply losing the old ones, which is what
        happens now?  Most of "you" will continue to exist, and the
        new neurons will be available to share the load and/or take
        on new capability as you learn.
        
        	/dave

    re .11 - you don't have to look to elves for builtin population
    control, rabbits do it.  Pregnant rabbits reabsorb fertilized ova
    (effectively aborting them) when the warren population builds up
    too high.  I believe this is a stress reaction.  I don't think we'd
    want to resort to a similar mechanism (who likes stress?), and one
    could claim that this is not an effective method of population control
    (ask the Australians about rabbits).
    
    len.
    

re .7:

Machines die because sooner or later something fails that cannot 
be replaced.  You can change the transmission of your Model T, and 
then the pistons, and maybe even the whole engine block, but when the 
chassis goes, that's about it.  The same applies for biological mechanisms.
Sooner or later you're going to lose some key bit of genetic info.  
Either that, or something more drastic like getting hit by a truck happens. 
If you cross the street enough times, you're bound to get it.  If you 
expose your DNA to enough alpha particles,  it's going to get parity errors.
That's why you should keep your DNA on tape somewhere with tons of 
error correction so you can get a fresh body every now and then.  Likewise,
you should keep several copies of your soul in the vault in case of catastrophe.

One book that goes into quite a lot of detail about this particular 
kind of immortality is "Pursuit of the Screamer" by Ansen Dibbel.  There's
a sequel called "Circle, Crescent, Star" (I think).  Both are recommended.

/jlr

Actually, I think that immortality is probably the worst thing that 
could happen to the human race, for two reasons.  The first is that 
the species' ability to change and adapt would go to zero.  It's 
already true that the older you are, the less you like change.  Think 
of how conservative people would be if they had centuries or millenia 
of future life to protect!  They would hardly dare to get out of bed.

Would this be a bad thing?  Yes, because someone or something who was 
not so conservative would come along and wipe us out.  It could an 
alien race, it could be a splinter human soceity that did not take 
the immortality drug (or were not permitted to), or it could be a 
natural disaster which we just couldn't cope with.

The other reason is that immortals would no longer be quite human.
Two of our main drives are the fear of death and the desire for children,
and immortals would lack both.  They would seem to be passionless, 
cowardly creatures to us.  Perhaps other drives would replace the 
ones they miss, and they would get just as rich an emotional life.  
It would be a different set from ours, though, and possibly not an 
attractive one.

/jlr

        .15: There've been lots of stories about exactly the phenomenon
        you postulate, that immortals tend to be become highly
        protective of their lives, gather immense wealth and power, and
        become ultra conservative.  They rarely seem to just lay in bed,
        though... that's too dangerous.  They tend to take more active
        precautions for their safety than to just hide in a hole. 
        
        On the other hand, it's equally reasonable to suppose that
        after a few millenia of this, people would become bored with
        their ultra protected conservative lives, and become a race
        of daredevil adventurers for whom life holds little value
        in and of itself.
        
        As for losing the ability to adapt and change... technological
        civilization has already drastically reduced the chances
        of any significant genetic changes in the species.  We control
        our environment too much for natural selection to occur.
        
        Your last paragraph is interesting... in your first paragraph
        you talk of how immortals would huddle in fear for their
        potentially infinite lives, you then go on to say they're not
        human because they have no fear of death.  Huh?  And who's
        to say they'd have no desire for children?  Even if immortality
        were somehow tied to sterility, that doesn't mean they wouldn't
        *want* children.  And who says they have to be sterile, in
        any case?
        
        	/dave

re: .-1

I didn't mean genetic change, but cultural and technological change.  
Even today you're already out of it by age 40 in certain fast moving fields.

Hmmm, yep, I do seem to have a contradiction between huddling in bed 
and not fearing death.  Perhaps I should have said that immortals 
don't fear having a limited amount of time.  You and I know that we 
only have so long to do whatever we want to do.  "And at my back I 
always hear/ Time's winged chariot hurrying near". Immortals don't 
have to rush to do anything.   There will always be time later for it.
Sort of kills ambition.

And yes, immortals will be sterile, or nearly so.  There won't be room
for them all otherwise, unless they live in a situation that can
accomodate extremely high growth.  Maybe they'll want children, but
they won't be able to have more than one or two per lifetime. A
frustrated paternal drive might be worse than none at all. 

/jlr

    I disagree about the harmful effects on society.  First of all if
    you were to take the current world situation I believe there would
    be major changes.  Would a race capable of living centuries put
    up with some over blown politicians trheating nuclear  distruction?
    I doubt it very much.  
    
    Also life might become even MORE precious since there is more to
    loose.  
    
    I do think boredom would drive many individuals to do SOMETHING
    and with an ever expanding populace that would probably include
    space travel.  Do you think we would still be working in Earth orbit
    if travel to other planets didn't take a significant portion of
    our life expectancy?
    
    The whole "birth control" issue is mute.  Either immortality would
    cause a lower birth rate as a "side effect" or we would in a worse
    overpopulated problem then we are now, in which case our views on
    the issue would depend on what options were available.  Colonizing
    other worlds would solve both this problem and the boredom.
    
    Finally all the resources we spend now on extending life would be
    directed to improving the quality of it.
    
    I have more to say but think I leave it at this for now.
                      
    Jim

    Expansion can't substitute for birth control unless you image a
    super-science that whisks millions of people daily to other star
    systems.  And even that would be a stop-gap.  Populations expand
    exponentially, unless constrained.  We would fill up the galaxy,
    then the observable universe, in jig time -- ESPECIALLY jig time
    on an immortal time-scale.
    
    No, a society of immortals will either have strict population control
    or it won't be "immortal" very long.  It'll starve.
    
    A frustrated parenting drive would at least give immortals something
    to do things about.  Creative acitivity seems a natural and laudable
    outlet.  If the immortals renew their minds with amnesiac vacations
    of a few decades, as Clarke suggested, there would be plenty of
    people anxious to play foster-parent to the amnesiac.
    
    I once came up with four basic immortal life-styles, to which a
    friend added a fifth.  They were:
    
    STUCK IN A RUT:  I fear me the vast majority of people, given endless
    youth, would merely extend the kinds of lives they live now in their
    adulthood.  E.g. go on being a CPA until a glacier grinds your office
    away.  This type could become the ultra-conservative described in
    previous notes.  The greatest cause of population turn-over might
    be that most people are too set in their ways too soon to learn
    good safety habits, and so keep sying in accidents.
    
    MAD WITH ENNUI:  At the extreem opposite, an immortal might get
    increasingly bored and seek out excitment and adventure.  Such an
    "immortal" will be relatively short-lived, but it sounds better
    than the rut, at least to this ephemeral.
    
    DRIFTING:  The benign version of "mad with ennui" spends three or
    four decades at a career, gets really good at it, and then goes
    back to school to learn a new one (possibly taking an amnesia vacation
    to limber up the old lobes).  After a few millenia, your main problem
    is that there isn't much left you aren't an expert in.  This is
    probably the route I'd try to take.
    
    ARS LONGA, VITA LONGA:  Creative artists often seem to never run
    out of steam in the time they currently have.  One might be able
    to go on being a sculptor, painter, musician, scientist, scholar,
    etc. for ever, or at least for much longer than a lot of other careers.
    This is the benign version of getting stuck in a rut.  (The tag is a 
    pardoy of "Ars longa, vita brevis," `Art is long, life is short.')
    
    The fifth method is LONG-TERM PLANNING:  Not quite as strictly
    everlasting.  You set yourself a goal that will take you a great
    while to reach.  "I always wanted to be like Sherlock Holmes.  So
    first I'll strudy foresic science for twenty years, then thirty
    years of various languages, then a century of medicine just to preclude
    the necessity for a Watson, then..."  Of course, once you reach
    your goal, you've got to ask "What next?"  Maybe your goal is to
    adventure in reasonable safety for a few millenia, before your luck
    runs out, or maybe you are now fit to settle down with your Art.
    
    If it were lucky, an immortal society would have enough of the latter
    four types to keep from being swamped by the first type.
                                                                      
    
    Earl Wajenebrg

    re .13
    	Humans (female types) also have been shown to reabsorb 
    	embryoes during the first trimester.  Or so the learned
    	medical journal claimed, after a lot of checking...

    re .19:
    
    A fifth type would be the "absolute Renniassance Man" type who would
    want to spend all of his or her time studying forever.  Since there's
    nearly a transfinite amount of stuff to study, sduch a person would
    be unlikely either to get bored or run out of things to do.
    
    I've met such people even as ephemerals.
    
    Steve Kallis, Jr.
    

    It occurs to me that as long as the brain is finite, it might be
    possible to find more things to do, learn, and experience than the
    brain is capable of remembering.  One could go on doing "new" things
    over and forgetting them until the next time.  Life would never need to
    be boring. 
    
    
    				-- edp

re: .22

Learning is boring too after a while.  I have a lot of trouble 
staying awake in classroom courses these days.  In grade school I sat 
in class for seven hours a day, and I don't know how I stood it.  Well, my 
brain was different then.  Different because it was empty.

Learning is an activity like any other, and like any other you can 
become tired of it.  The motive for learning is the pleasure of 
discovery, of seeing connections where none existed before.  Like any 
other pleasure, that can pall after a while.  Most people, in fact, 
do learn less and less as they get older.  This might be a 
consequence of biological aging, but it's also true that people have 
less and less of a desire to learn.

Actually, my own theory about why people learn less as they age is 
that learning and doing are to some extent mutually exclusive.  When 
you're young you're in a learning mode because no one expects you to 
do anything.  Once you grow up, though, you've got to get out there 
and defend the tribe against the sabre-tooth tigers, and you can't go 
on saying "Hmmm, that's an interesting fang structure".  Someone who 
stays curious about everything becomes a dilettante.  In order to 
accomplish things, you've got to focus on one area.  That's true even 
in fields like ours, where knowledge and quick thinking is prized 
above all else.

/jlr

    Re .23:
    
    What's wrong with being a dilettante?  Also, the reason we focus
    in one area is because we don't have time for more.  You've got
    to learn something and then go support yourself doing it.  Why couldn't
    people learn something, earn money, save up for their "retirement"
    and then retire to school to learn a new profession?  The first
    problem I see is motivation, but I think a few hundred years of
    boredom would motivate people.
    
    
    				-- edp

    Re .24 et all
    
> problem I see is motivation, but I think a few hundred years of
> boredom would motivate people.
    
If it doesn't kill you first :-)

	Bob L.

I seem to remember a Star Trek novel I read a few years back where the 
antagonist modified the typical transporter to beam you back the moment 
you got killed, but recontruct your body the way it was 5 minutes before 
you got killed. No worry about danger! You could also make clones of 
yourself!


MartyJ

    I believe the novels you refer to (there are two of them) have as
    their antagonist Black Omne.  Both of them have "Phoenix" in the
    title, and I believe one of them is called *The Price of The Phoenix*.
    I also believe they were written by two women in collaboration.
    
    I liked them a lot.  Any more specific title info?  Jayembee, where
    are you?
    
    Dave W.

    The novels with Omne are "The Price of the Phoenix" and "The Fate
    of the Phoenix" by Myrna Culbreath and ... Myrna Culbreath and...
    Let me go to the book shelves... (Ain't noting at home great?)
    Ah yes, Myrna Culbreath and Sondra Marshak.
    
       The books were published by Bantam Science Fiction.
    
    	I don't remember that use of transporters in these.  But then
    again I didn't like them very much so I haven't reread them since
    I first read them several years ago and I've made no effort to remember
    their details.
    
    tlh
    

    re (somewhere around) .25: Star Trek and transporter...
    
    	Larry Niven wrote a story, sort of in his "Tales of 
    	Known Space" universe, of a man sent out on a 'slow boat'
    	star ship to salt lifeless planets with biological
    	material for terra-forming.  When he got back Earth was
    	changed...
    
    	Anyway, there were two or three forms of immortality, including
    	a form of the transporter.  In this transporter, however, you
    	were transported while alive, but the 'trash', waste, from
    	your cells was left behind, rejuvinating your body.
    	Obviously, you had to repeat this treatment every 20-50 years.
    
    
    Dwight

    A point of order.
    
    The transporter transmitted only the gunk from the cells, you stayed
    behind, quote 'he pushed the button, and the other booth imediatly
    had dust motes dancing in it' (or thereabouts).
    
    The original short story was called 'RAMMER', the longer story derived
    from it was called 'A world out of time'.
    
    He also brought up an interesting concept in moving the Earth. Basicly
    you had a looooong tube with a bell in the end, you forced this
    down onto (and I think it was Uranus) a gas giant, and fire a lazer
    up the tube, instant fusion. This makes Uranus move, you then move
    uranus past Earth, and it will start to drag Earth along, with minimal
    earthquake effects!, when Earth is where you want it, you speed
    up Uranus and leave Earth behind.....
    
    He illistrated this with the following example;
    Q. How do you get off an Elephant?
    A. You don't, you get off a Duck, cause it's safer.
    
    
    
    Stan.

    (This note is actually from STUBBI::REINKE but STUBBI is sick today.
    Comments on the above.
    .3 and others that immortals' society would be slow to change and
    become technologically and politcally stagnant. James Hogan has
    his Ganymedeans choose to abandon immortality for just that reason.
    .4 and others on repairing DNA. I don't have my references here
    at work with me but I do remember that there are enzymes that are
    responsible for recognizing and repairing errors in DNA. It has
    been postulated that these enzmes somehow wear out, stop functioning,
    or are blocked by other enzymes. I know one area of research in
    gereontology is to determine what causes the repair enzymes to stop
    functioning properly. This would create a difference between cell
    reproduction in an embryo and a mature person. There are no/far
    fewer errors in younger tissues because all the repair enzymes are
    functioning o.k.
    .11 on low fecundity in long lived beings. The Cheiri in the darkover
    series and also the Ents in Middle earth have very low reproduction
    rates. In the cheiri it seems to come from lack of an appropriate
    partner in the time periods (each relatively brief) that one can
    mate. In the Ents it appears to be caused by extremely low
    (nonexistant?) sex drives. (Which raises the question in immortals
    with very long lives and a low sex drive what would bind the sexes
    together so that when they can mate a memeber of the opposite sex
    will be geographically available?) what about immortality or extremely
    long lives in sentiant (sp?) plants like ents. Plants continue to
    grow and reproduce as long as they live. So maybe the ability to
    continue to be able to reproduce is somehow tied in with long lives.
    .12 and others on regenerating brain tissue. apparently fetal neurons
    can be grafted into adult brains (in rats I think) and replace damaged
    brain tissue. Which then raises another question - where do you
    get the fetal nerve tissue in humans?
                                                                        

    No one has yet admitted to trying brain-grafts in humans, but they
    should work just as well as in rats.  The human brain (probably
    any mammalian brain) is an "immunologically privileged organ" and
    neither provokes nor initiates rejection.
    
    The least controversial source of fetal brain tissue would be still
    births.
    
    Earl Wajenberg

    In a rejuvenating population, one would suppose the main cause of
    death to be accident and misadventure.  Under these conditions,
    what would the life expectancy be?  No way of telling for sure,
    of course, but you can get an idea.
    
    The USA has a population of about 200 million and suffers about
    100,000 accidental deaths every year.  Using those figures and treating
    a cohort of immortals ("cohort" = all the people born in the same
    year) the way you treat a sample of radioactive atoms, you can
    calculate "decay rates" and "half-lives."
    
    At the current American rate of accidental death, a cohort of immortals
    has a half-life of 1400 years; in the year 4400, half the people
    born in the year 3000 are still alive.  Each of them has a 60% chance
    of living to be 1000.  10% of the cohort survives for 4600 years.
    1% survives 9200 years.
    
    This accident rate could be higher if immortals become hidebound
    and thus less adaptable.  On the other hand, it could become lower
    if immortals become very cautious.  For instance, 75% of those
    accidental deaths in the USA are traffic accidents.  If you imagine
    that immortals institute a very safe transit system and introduced
    no new causes of fatality, the figures change dramatically.
    
    A cohort has a half-life of 7000 years.
    The chance of living to be 1000 is 90%.
    10% of the cohort is left after 23,000 years
    1% of the cohort is left ater 46,000 years.
    
    That 1% would be about as old as modern man is now.
    
    In the twentieth century, a cohort wields considerable economic,
    poltical, and social power for about 40 years, from age 20 to age
    60.  A rejuvenating cohort would remain "in power" for about 4000
    years.  If they may a habit of buckling their seat-belts, they could
    stay in power 20,000 years.
    
    Back when quantum mechanics and relativity were young and struggling,
    Max Planck remarked that the main way new theories become acceptable
    is by the old generation of scientists dying off.  It looks as if
    scientific progress would slow down by two or three orders of magnitude
    if the scientists were immortal.  So, I imagine, would most other
    forms of social change.
    
    Of course, other factors could intervene.  (For instance, deliberate
    and frequent resort to amnesia to start life over again, or some
    other social mechanism for re-shuffling the deck.)  But this
    demographic inertia must still be taken into account.
    
    Earl Wajenberg

    Sorry, my calculations were out in .33.  According to a second try,
    the results are:
    
    With a death-rate of 500 per million people per year,
    
    50% survive 1400 years	60% chance of living to be 1000
    10% survive 4600 years
     1% survive 9200 years
         
    With a death-rate of 125 per million people per year,
    
    50% survive 5500 years	90% chance of living to be 1000
    10% survive 18,400 years
     1% survive 36,800 years
    
    The first is the death-rate for accidental death in the USA.  The
    accidental death rate for young adults (who match the theoretical
    immortals physiologically) is even higher.  The second death-rate
    is what you have left if you neglect traffic-related deaths and
    indicates the magnitude of change you could get from a major but
    not impossible change of lifestyle.
    
    If anyone wants to do these calculations themselves, the equations
    are:
    
    		dN   N
    	      - -- = -		where (-dN/dT) is the death rate,
    		dT   K		      N is the population, and K is
    				      a proportionality constant
                                                                 
    
    	    T = K ln (N'/N)	where T is the time, N' is the initial
    				      population, and N is the current
    				      population.
            
    
    Earl Wajenberg

Steadily better medicine (something that immortals would be very, 
very interested in) would decrease those rates.  I've heard, in fact, 
that the US highway death toll has stayed constant in spite of rising 
amounts of driving because of better medical techniques.  Some 
accidents are always going to be fatal (eg head crushed by punch 
press) but many will not.  The lower limit to the death rate may well 
be determined by crime instead of accidents.  People will always find 
a sure way to murder each other in spite of better medicine.  I won't hazard
a guess, though, with regard to the murder rate among immortals.
/jlr

    My statistics were only intended to give a rough idea of immortal
    life-spans and the rate of population turnover.  Not only would
    changes in medical technology change the death rate, there would
    be a strange form of natural selection.  The half-life model of
    immortal demographics assumes that every immortal has an equal chance
    of dying every day.  (We really shouldn't call these folk "immortals,"
    but I can't think of anything else as punchy.)  In reality, careless
    immortals will tend to die off before careful ones, so that, after
    a couple of millenia, any surviving immortals of a given vintage
    will be very expert survivors and have even longer life-expectancies
    than the average member of their cohort a millenium ago.
    
    Earl Wajenberg

One interesting form of eternal life I haven't seen in past replies
in the method use in  " Alex Burges " (not sure of the name..)
short story in which the Hero (?) decides to stop the Total
war due any day now !!
He builds a Generator that steps up the ability of animal cells
to repair damage to 100 %, since age is damage no one ages,
no death etc etc , However kids stay as kids, old men 1 minute from
death stay that way, children in the womb stay there .
The Hero (?) believes that this is a small price to pay for eternal
peace.

However

Slight problem ; that memory is damage to the RNA structures in the same
way that a wax cylinder is damaged by the recording needle, so these
grand  immortals memory of today fades by tomorrow  !! The work around
for this is for memory to be taped each night , thus you can play
back memories of a holiday as you would a movie, edit out whole
years (hecayears) edit your whole life to order, thus here you have
the people types as in  .19 plus the Editor type

must find that book in my library


ta

peb

    It appeared in _Analog_ in the mid-60s, called, if I recall correctly,
    "the End of Summer."
    
    Jerry?
    

Spot on,  The End Of Summer, 1954 Algis Budrys


Homebodies,Workers,Students,Hoppers,Editors all trying to get
past eternal life

interesting thought, edit your life to order...

ta

peb

Newsgroups: rec.arts.books,rec.arts.sf-lovers
Path: decwrl!purdue!gatech!rebel!didsgn!till
Subject: Immortality bibliography
Posted: 30 Jun 88 13:29:11 GMT
Organization: Digital Design Inc., Norcross GA
Xref: decwrl rec.arts.books:3333 rec.arts.sf-lovers:16361
 
    NOTE: What follows is updated (rev. 1.1, as it were) - enhanced by
contributions from various correspondents, additional reading, and
insertion of books I just plain FORGOT. This is being re-posted for
those who missed rev 1.0. Since there were a number of contributions
that I have, so far, been unable to follow-up on, I have flagged those
books that do not meet the I-have-read-it criterion with a rating of "??". 
Added at the end is an additional bit of comment which is fairly irrelevant
in bibliographical terms, but which I wanted to get off my chest anyway.
 
    A List of Immortalist Writings:
 
    The following bibliography, covering books that have been
published and re-published, does *not* list the currently available
editions. Also, some of the listed works are members of (typically
science fiction of fantasy) series - in which case I have listed the
name of the series, and omitted the individual titles (excepting maybe
the one of the first member in order to get anybody interested started
in his search). My rationale is that anybody who REALLY wants to find
a particular book will go to the effort of contacting me personally
to ask. My email and smail addresses are included at the end - and I am
very willing to supply any further information I have. 
 
    The citeria for including books in this list:

*  They must include, more than just peripherally, the topic of human 
   immortality or emortality.
*  If they are fiction then the removal of the immortalist element would
   have to substantially change the existing storyline.  
*  If they are non-fiction then the topic must have been covered either
   explicitly or obliquely, as physical immortality, or disguised by
   by references to "longevity".
*  I have actually read them either fully or in parts.
 
    The order is alphabetical by author. 
 
    Works are flagged by class:

SF	-	science fiction
FA	-	fantasy
GF	-	general fiction
PH	-	philosophy
GN	-	general non-fiction
NA	-	new-age type of writing
CL	-	Christian literature
 
    I have marked those works I consider to be of special merit (don't
ask about the criteria!) with 1-4 asterisks (that is not meant to be a
derogation of those who remain unmarked- but merely a reflection of MY
personal preferences and/or inclinations). Also, this rating scheme
only relates to the relevance and/or value of those works as
contributions to the general discussion about the pros and cons of a)
the desirability of immortality as implemented in human beings, and b)
ways and means to achieve it. Ratings *precede* the listing of the
author's name. 
 
    Another point worthy of note:  There is an unbelievable treasure
of books out there (fiction and non- fiction) dealing with the topic
of human immortality. 
 
    In the fictional area, fantasy is typically the most prolific
breeding ground. Here, magic and naturally-supernatural forces take
the place of science- or, quite often, *become* the science of the
universe depicted. Other genres also contain some interesting tidbits,
but not quite as many. This is where Heinlein stands out as the most
productive writer. 
 
    Non-fiction, however, is where the real surprises lie. The amount
of serious (rational, believable, -definitely *non-cuckoo* !!-)
advocates for the striving for physical immortality (or "emortality"
as it should be called- meaning "deathless life") is staggering. The
range is equally suprising, from Taoist to Christian philosphers, to
rather materialist thinkers, and including some seriously scientific
and technological visionaries. 
 
    The sample following is LIMITED- believe me. I haven't read even
half of the material I know is out there. That may be either because I
have not yet been able to get a book or piece of writing- or else I
have glanced at one that was available, but considered it to be
rubbish (and that omits it from this list here by implication). A lot
of the stuff written about the topic is, not suprisingly, quite
insufferable. Some of the remainder is out of print, and may only be
found in rare book shops or good libraries. Sorry abut that, but
that's life in emortalist literature... 
 
    List follows:
    -------------
 
    Three literary/cinematographic phenomena do not easily fit my
bibliographic scheme- but they require mentioning anyway: 
 
    Rating: *** (and I don't refer to the LITERARY qualities!) One is
from Germany, and started in the early '60s. It was a series of pulp
magazines, published weekly. The name of the series was "Perry Rhodan-
Der Erbe des Universums" ("Inheritor of the Universe"). The last one I
read was issue #550, or thereabouts, and I believe it is still being
sold. Some individual stories out of the series have made their way
into the English speaking realms as paperbacks- but that was but a
feeble reflection of the phenomenon named "Perry Rhodan". The series
itself was, in its scope, writing, and contents, far superior to the
only (even though remote) equivalent in the US, namely Star Trek. The
core figures (some humans, and human and un-human aliens) were
immortal, kept that way by purely technological means, provided to
them by a superior intelligence. This was, in every sense, hard-core SF. 
 
    Rating: (good question- there is so much variety here that I dare
not judge) The second phenomenon is Star Trek, of course. Here the
theme of immortality creeps up again and again, though predominantly
in a negative context (meaning that either we have lunatic human or
human-like immortals or beings so superior that it makes you sick...).
There are, however, oblique deviations from that trend. 
 
    Rating: ** An unabashedly immortalist movie, entitled "Highlander".

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
 
Aero, R		- (GN)		The Complete Book of Longevity.
 
Rating: **
Anthony, Piers  - (FA)		The "Incarnations of Immortality" series.
				First one is "On a Pale Horse".
 
Baker, Martha   - (GN)		How to Think To Live Forever.
 
Rating: *
Bill, AC	- (GN,PH)	The Conquest of Death: An Imminent Step in
				Evolution.
 
Bogomolets, AA	- (GN)		The Prolongation of Life.
 
Rating: ***
Bova, Ben	- (SF,FA)	Orion
				Orion's Revenge.
 
Rating: *
Drexler, E.K.	- (GN)		Engines of Creation.
 
Rating: ***
Eddings, David	- (FA)		The Belgariad and The Malloreon.	
				Two series of fantasy novels. First book
				in the Belgariad is "Pawn of Prophecy".
				The Belgariad is complete (5 books).
				First book in The Malloreon is "Guardians
				of the West". The Malloreon is currently
				incomplete (only 2 books published).
				
 
Rating: ??
Esfandiary, F.M.- (GN)		Up-wingers: A Futurist Manifesto.
 
Ettinger, RCW    - (GN)		The Prospect of Immortality.
 
Rating: *
Farmer, Philip J - (SF,FA)	"World of Tiers" series. First book was
				"Maker of Universes".
				Riverworld Series. First book was "To Your
				Scattered Bodies Go".
 
Gaze, Harry	-  (PH,CL)	To Live Forever.
 
Rating: *
Giles, L	 - (GN)		A Gallery of Chinese Immortals.
 
Rating: ***
Gillies, J	 - (GN)		Psychological Immortality.
 
Gruman, G J	 - (GN)		A History of Ideas about the Prolongation
				of Life . (In Transactions of the American 
				Philosophical Society, Dec 1966).
 
Rating: *
Gunn, James	 - (SF,FA)	The Immortal.
				The Magicians.
 
Rating: ****
Harrington, Alan - (GN)		The Immortalist.
 
Rating: ****
Heinlein, R A    - (SF,FA)	Methuselah's Children.
				Time Enough for Love.
				I Will Fear No Evil.
				Cat Who Walks Through Walls.
				Number of the Beast.
				
Rating: *
Herbert, Frank   - (SF,FA)	The "Dune" series of books.
 
Rating: *
Hilton, James	 - (GF)		Lost Horizon.
 
Rating: *
Hutschnecker, A	 - (GN)		The Will to Live.
 
Rating: *
Jung C G &
Wilhelm, R	 - (GN,PH)	The Secret of the Golden Flower. (Translation
				and comment on an acient Chinese text).
 
Rating: ??
Juniper, Dean	- (GN)		Man Against Mortality.
 
Rating: **
Koontz, Dean R   - (GF)		Strangers.
				Watchers.
 
Liu, Da		 - (GN)		The Tao of Health and Longevity.
 
McDevitt,  J	 - (SF)		The Hercules Text.
 
Rating: *
Orr, Leonard	 - (GN,NA)	Physical Immortality and Transfiguration.
				Rebirthing in the New Age.
 
Rating: *
Otto, Stuart	 - (PH,CL)	How to Conquer Physical Death.
("Friend Stuart")		The Turning Point.
 
Rating: ??
Pohl, Fred	- (SF)		The "Heechee" series.
 
Reeves, M	 - (FA)		The Shattered World.
 
Rating: **
Reynolds, Mack   - (SF)		Eternity.
 
Rating: ***
Siegel, Bernie   - (GN)		Love, Medicine, and Miracles.
 
Smith, EE "Doc"  - (SF)		The Lensman series.
 
Rating: **
Spalding, Baird  - (GN,NA)	The Life and Teaching of the Masters of
				the Far East (5 volumes).
 
Stewart, FM	 - (SF)		The Methuselah Enzyme.
 
Rating: ****
Troward, Thomas  - (PH)		The Creative Process in the Individual.
				The Edinburgh Lectures on Mental Science.
 
Rating: *
Unamuno, M. de   - (GN,PH) 	The Tragic Sense of Life.
 
Vance, Jack      - (SF)		To Live Forever.
 
Vardeman, R E	 - (FA)		The "Centotaph Road" series. First book
				was "Cenotaph Road").
 
Rating: ??
Wagner, E K      - (SF)		Bloodstone (and other titles, I am told)
 
Walford, R L     - (GN)		Maximum Life Span.
 
Watson, Ian      - (SF)		Croyd (and others, or so I am told)
 
Watson, Lyall    - (GN)		The Romeo Error.
 
Wilde, Oscar     - (GF)		The Picture of Dorian Gray.
 
Rating: ??
Wilhelm, Kate 	- (SF)		Welcome to Chaos.
 
Rating: **
Zelanzy, Roger   - (SF,FA)	This Immortal.
				Lord of Light.
				Isle of the Dead.
				To Die in Italbar.
				Amber Series.
				Jack of Shadows.
				Madwand.
 
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
 
    P.S. According to Korean traditions one of the symbols of
longevity was a mushroom, called the "pulloch'o". This fungus was a
purely mythical entity, puportedly never seen by mortal humans (keep
that in mind as you read on). In many works of Korean art (and the
Koreans REALLY had it in for immortality- much like the ancient
Chinese)  the mushroom appears in myriad places, often in association
with other common symbols of eternal life (such as cranes, turtles,
rocks and the peaches from the orchard of eternal life). Not
infrequently immortals are shown as carrying loads of them around on
their backs, presumably to share them with their cohorts. The
mushrooms themselves, when depicted, look like small clouds with very
peculiar appendages. *Very* much like brains, in fact. Talk about
subtle messages for those who want to see... 
 
    (For those interested in a reference, try "Korea's Cultural Roots"
by Dr. Jon Carter Covell, HOLLYM INT. CORP., Elizabeth, New Jersey, 1981). 
 
    Rev 1.1 comment to the P.S.:  There was at least ONE perceptive
person, who thought it worthwhile to comment on my reference to Korean
immortalist symbolism. I was gratified to see that it got through to
somebody at all- because the matter is, I think, of some importance.
Following the section of interest in that correspondence (quoted
because there are other interesting comments in here that might elicit
some responses): 

>I wonder also if you have heard of the slogan meme SMI2LE (I2 as in I-squared)?
>It stands for Space Migration, Intelligence applied to Intelligence, and
>Life Extension. Three worthy goals for the future of humanity. The term was
>coined by Timothy Leary. I2 might take a *bit* of explaining-- the basic idea
>is to use intelligence to develop means to amplify intelligence (computers,
>drugs, nanotech, etc.) Was it in this sense that you said those Korean
>mushrooms in the picture were a symbol for those who want to see, or was your
>meaning more ARCANE?

    Yes, my meaning (like, I suppose, that of the originators of the
mushroom symbol) was arcane- though not in a necessarily metaphysical
sense (or maybe it was...- I find that hard to pinpoint, as the
boundaries between modern-day physics and metaphysics are, I think,
rather blurry...). For all you closet-emortalists (being one is, as I
know only too well, almost invariably a qualification for
discreditation, and an open invitation for accusations of
cuckoo-ism...) I would like to say just this: I have a jaundiced view
of our technological (ANY type of technology) present and future
capabilities (say 10-20 years or thereabouts- and I would be the first
to jubilate if I turned out to be wrong!) to make humans attain any
kind of emortality (or at least carry them through for long enough to
the point where there WILL be the technology necessary). Cryogenics I
find quite unsatisfactory as well, and spend very little time thinking
about (and it is there that I have my main problems with that
otherwise brilliant piece of literature called "The Immortalist"). 

    I have been researching the topic of physical immortality since
about 1972 (at least that's how far I can trace it back), and arrived
at the following (carefully considered) conclusions. If emortality is-
for a given individual, alive today- to be an achievable aim, then the
reaching of that goal will have to be the result of an individual
effort, which involves, above all else, a profound change from the
"deathist" (that is, I think, Leonard Orr's term) ways of thinking
which pervade our society. Without that you might as well forget about
it completely. I believe that emortality can be achieved without
taking recourse to excessively stupid religious rituals (though I am
NOT denigrating the value of an adequate set of metaphysical concepts
and beliefs), and that, most certainly, there are numerous biomedical
devices (present and future, electronic, nanotechnological,
biochemical) available or in the offing, that will no doubt help to
support the effort. 

    In that sense the I2 concept is perfectly valid. Whatever else we
are, we are also biological engines, which indeed could never be what
they are without their "physicality" (sorry...). It is therefore
perfectly legitimate (a part of our continuing effort, in fact, to
make the physical universe into an image of our mental cosmos) to use
apparently "base" engineering methods to engineer the physical proof
of our divinity. It may well be our DUTY to do so- if you want to talk
about purpose and meaning... (There are some real jewels in the list
above that put this much more eloquently than I can). 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Till Noever, 210 Spalding Trail N.E., Atlanta, Ga, 30328 USA
Path:  [email protected]
or     gatech!rebel!didsgn!till
"Mortalists become extinct by default..."
------------------------------------------------------------------------------

    "An opinion based on ignorance is worthless." - John Houston

Newsgroups: rec.arts.books,rec.arts.sf-lovers
Path: decwrl!ucbvax!agate!helios.ee.lbl.gov!nosc!ucsd!ames!mailrus!uflorida!
Subject: Immortality/Emortality bibliography
Posted: 5 Jul 88 13:12:04 GMT
Organization: Digital Design Inc., Norcross GA
Xref: decwrl rec.arts.books:3378 rec.arts.sf-lovers:16440
 
    A few notes to those who responded to my posting (and a note of
thanks to the numerous valuable additions and suggestions...): 
 
* Why I didn't add currently available publications, where applicable,
  is simple: I looked in my bookshelf, and many of the books are many years
  old- and some of them are so old that I only have photocopied versions
  of books that are by now so fragile that I opened them only once, namely
  to copy them in the library. Others have been through several re-editions
  since the time I bought them, while others have, I think, gone out of
  print completely.

  My advice for those who cannot find current copies in bookshops (new
  or used) is to go to a good library (preferably one which is on line
  to OCLC or some other nation-wide cataloguing system) and see if the
  titles are listed there. I know for a fact that all of the out-of-print
  books in that list are somewhere on the OCLC network. The problem then
  remains one of actually GETTING the book into your hand.

  Well, the possibility of accomplishing that is contingent on many
  factors. I happened to be fortunate enough, during my search for many
  of these volumes, to be an employee of a University with full access to
  the interloan system. Not all are that lucky, as I well appreciate.
  If anybody has a great desire for a SPECIFIC book or set of books,
  please contact me directly. I will happily divulge my most recent 
  source- if one if available.
 
* Some readers remain puzzled by my use of the term "emortalist" as opposed
  to "immortalist" (or emortalism, emortality, etc.).

  When you open the can of worms that is emortalist/immortalist literature
  the term will inevitably become more familiar. Its creation sprang from
  the unsatisfactory implications and associations of the term "immortality"
  when applied to prolongevist activity.

  "Immortality" (like, e.g. "impossibility", "implausibility", etc) implies
  a state in which death becomes an impossibility itself. This has severe
  religious overtones, and also basically disagrees with whatever the 
  prolongevist movement is interested in- though immortality as such may be a
  later stage in emortalist development! At this point, however, the interest 
  is in an existence in which death is no longer an inevitable fate, but may
  be postponed indefinitely. 

  "Emortality" thus is a word that is meant to reflect an existence without
  the necessity of death. ( "Ex-mortality", if you will; a state where we 
  have lifted ourselves out of our mortal state.)
 
* The question, inevitably, arose, if I thought that emortals of the kind
  depicted by Mack Reynolds ("Eternity") or Robert Heinlein ("Methuselah's
  Children") actually existed.

  The answer is that, of course, I do not know (not being one myself it's
  really difficult to say). 

  But I think that a few are probably around. (Though I also suspect that
  none of the emortalist groupings I know of would really consider that to
  be true-- unless one ignores the mystical fringe of emortalism, where
  there are some adherents/followers of alledgedly immortal gurus, such as
  Babaji; which I view with a jaundiced eye).

  The fact that we do not know about any (and therefore blissfully conclude
  that everybody really HAS to die- based on statistical evidence that really
  proves something quite different) means only that emortals are probably a
  healthily paranoid bunch. A survival trait, no doubt, which I profoundly
  sympathize with- even though it doesn't (on a personal level) help me
  much either. It would be nice to have some theories confirmed before
  wasting too much time on blind alleys.
 
* Another issue was my implied (and rather off-hand objections) to taking
  cryogenics seriously. There was enough interest in the subject to warrant,
  I think, inclusion of a section of my response to one correspondent:
  ....
]The basic premise of cryonics was (intentionally or not) nicely attacked
]in the season's last episode of "Star Trek: The Next Generation".
]Picard, when confronted by the fact of frozen people, now thawed, 
]reacted with an offhanded response like "why bother- they were dead...".
]It would have been even better (though not from a dramatic point of view) if
]that comment had been logically followed through by the plot- but I guess the
]writers did not appreciate what they had almost given themselves...
]The point is that a cryogenically frozen person is indeed dead (PERIOD!)
]The ASSUMPTION (entirely unwarranted) is that, once UNfrozen again, it is
]not only possible (sometime in the future- whenever you want), to re-start
]the physiological environment again, but also to re-start (as one would 
]re-start a computer with a EPROM based bootstrap) whatever "software" (I
]cringe even as I use the expression in this context!) may have existed
]in the brain/body system prior to "shutdown". 

]Let us assume (for argument's sake- and I have no problem to project that
]capability into the future) that all problems associated with cell-damage
]can be overcome, and that there will not be any problems associated with
]the maintenance (through the freezing-thawing process) of all existing
]firmware. The latter assumption may be justified by considering the 
]distributed nature of the firmware (c.f. neural network simulations). 
]This should (one would hope) overcome statistically insignificant damage.
]The assumption then changes slightly. It is assumed that ALL NECCESSARY
]INFORMATION REQUIRED TO RECONSTITUTE MY MIND RESIDES IN FIRMWARE. The
]"system" may be re-started into precisely (precisely enough) the
]configuration it was in when it was shut down. The chemical and electrical
]environment will configure itself into what it should have been after
]an insignificant amount of time. (Either through some magical self-
]reconfiguration, or the patterns imposed by the firmware).
]That assumes, by implication, that ALL INFORMATION NECESSARY TO DEFINE
]MY MIND RESIDES IN EE-PROM LIKE FIRMWARE AT ANY GIVEN POINT IN TIME, and
]that only unimportant things like short-term memory reside in the dynamic
]chemical and electrical ambience of the brain, only waiting to be "firmwared".

]That assumption is, to my mind, completely unwarranted. It may assume
]a greater air of credibility if the degree of redundancy in the brain
]was not as high as it seems to be (though that would produce other problems)
]but there are few biologists around today that will seriously suggest 
]that neuronal connections account for all information stored in the
]brain (whether one uses local or holographic models does not matter).
]In fact, the critical dependence of whatever we perceive as our "mind"
]on very delicate chemical balances and electrical ambience, makes a
]mockery of that idea (which was, to begin with, conceived by cybernetics
]and computer people- whose paradigms lose substance and
]applicability when carried across to biology). From physics comes 
]an additional set of ideas that (though a little on the fringe as well,
]but I sense some hint of revelance) that there may be a model of mind 
]that includes quantum events as a major component- thus adding to
]the dynamic nature of whatever we call "mind". In that model the
]firmware represents mainly that component which requires comparatively
]little adjustment, and associates with functions as diverse as 
]processing of all perceptive inputs, communication (language, reading, etc),
]some long-term memory not immediately associated with such functions, and
]that kind of stuff.

]Everything else is DYNAMIC, more or less sensitively dependent on
]the sum-total state of what is essentially a chaotic system. ...
]The fact of the matter, like it or not, may well be (and emortalists
]everywhere ignore this at great danger to their long-term plans!) that
]cessation of brain functions may be an irreversible process (scientifically
]speaking). There is no physical mechanism that suggests in any way that
]the uniqueness of a given brain can be re-generated without putting it
]through an IDENTICAL set of historical events and influences as those
]which formed it in the first place-- and if quantum mechanics comes into it, 
]then there is, IN PRINCIPLE, no way to do it (again, PERIOD!- end of dicussion
]and no way out...).

]Note that, from the above, freezing and reviving bacteria, insects or
]even mice, proves absolutely NOTHING- short of the fact that we can revive
]something at all. All entities at that level, however, are unfortunately
]unable to prove anything about the survival of "mind". That is assumed
]by inference (and represents shoddy thinking).

]I find it diffcult to express my profound sense that ANY method of "survival"
]that does not include the continous survival (without any substantial change
]of a physiological nature) of the brain- and probably the body- is really
]a flop; just another way of lying to ourselves- indeed just another form of
]religionism, replacing an unjustifyable set of concepts (about "heaven")
]with another one (about what is scientifically utter nonsense).
]I have more problems with the latter than the former because at least 
]religion does not aspire (in general, execptions notwithstanding) to
]scientific rationalism. My opinion of serious proponents of cryogenics and 
]related "survival"-methods is therefore very low. At best they are mis-
]guided and (understandably!) desperate. At worst they are cynical frauds.
]The main point I would like to reiterate is one I have made before: In
]order to become emortal it is first necessary to drop ALL pretense, and
]to detect the myriad forms of "creeping deathism" when they occur. It
]requires an honest admission that there are no insurance policies for
]survival THROUGH death. They are an investment without any return.
]Dead is dead is dead...

]From a purely biomedical/scientific point of view it is therefore necessary
]to avoid the final event completely. And that is where all our efforts
]must go- everything else being wasted time and energy. 
]And how THAT can be done is a completely different question altogether.
  
    I would be grateful for any further feedback- complimentary or flaming...
 
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
	Till Noever
	Path:  [email protected]
	or     gatech!rebel!didsgn!till
	"Failure to clearly see the truth is eventually always fatal."
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
 

A couple of other books related to immortality for those who are interested:

Le Guin, Ursula K. - "The Farthest Shore" - Last book in the Earthsea trilogy.
Vitality is draining out of the world and Ged, now Archmage, must 
discover why.

Wyndham, John - "The Trouble with Lichen" - Humorous look at 
accidental discovery of a prolongation drug.

Clarke, Arthur C. - "The City and the Stars" - Immortality through 
computer storage.

Wolfe, Gene - "The Book of the New Sun" - Immortality through 
biochemical memory transfer.

Blish, James - "Cities in Flight" series - peripherally related; 
anti-agathic drugs replace gold as medium of currency.

/jlr

    Another...
    
    Niven, Larry - "A World Out of Time" - Jaybee Corbell orbits a black
    hole at the center of the galaxy and returns 3 million years in
    Earth's future. He finds Earth and the solar system reshaped by
    immortals...
    
    				- HBM

    > The fact that we do not know about any (and therefore blissfully
    > conclude that everybody really HAS to die- based on statistical
    > evidence that really proves something quite different)
      
    Did I miss something?  What statistical evidence do we have that:
    
    1) not everybody has to die
    
    2) everybody does not have to die
    
    or alternately, what statistical evidence is being improperly used
    to "conclude that everybody really HAS to die"?????
    
    Willie

Article: 423
From: [email protected] (Leo Breebaart)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.reviews,rec.arts.sf.written,alt.books.reviews
Subject: Kronto Review: Peter James -- "Host"
Organization: Delft University of Technology
Date: 05 Nov 93 01:23:12 GMT
 
%T Host
%A Peter James
%I Victor Gollancz, 
%C London 
%D October 1993
%G ISBN 0 575 05619 3
%O hardcover UK#15.99
 
Capsule Review: "Host" is a techno-thriller aimed at a mainstream
market.  It is a bit slow and long-winded in places, but it is
amazingly well-researched, it does not insult the reader's
intelligence, and it features the Internet in a rather prominent
supporting role. If you are a hardcore SF fan or computer freak you
won't find much new in the book, but you may find it, as I did, a very
amusing read. Your non-techie friends might even love it. 
 
Disclaimer: I am basing this review on a free review copy the
publishers sent me.  Make of that what you will... 
 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
It is a bit difficult to review "Host" fairly, because I am not really
a member of the target audience. Peter James has previously written a
number of successful horror novels, and this is his first try at a
technological thriller. The horror elements are still there, but
basically this is just a science fiction story aimed at the mainstream
market. 
 
As I said, the plot offers little that a science fiction fan will not
have read a thousand times elsewhere. Our hero is a brilliant computer
scientist who is obsessed with the idea of dying, or rather: the idea
of *not* dying. In order to achieve this goal, he is involved in two
major scientific efforts. One takes place in the field of cryonics:
deep-freezing dying people and waking them up when science has
advanced enough so that their illnesses can be cured. The other effort
is even more ambitious: Professor Joe Messenger would like to find a
way to download a human consciousness *entirely* into a computer, thus
making the very concept of bodies redundant. In order to accomplish
all this, Messenger has developed a giant neural-network computer,
which may or may not be actually evolving into consciousness itself...
 
I won't go into much more detail about the story in order to keep this
review spoiler-free, but basically James sets up a solid framework in
which these two scientific plot-lines interplay with each other, with
lots of thrills and chills resulting for Prof. Messenger, his
colleagues and his family. 
 
Ok, from this brief outline you are now probably thinking that this is
the *last* book on Earth you'd ever want to read, and I can't blame
you.  After all, it's incredibly easy to write a book like this (and
I've seen enough examples) that would amount to complete and utter
garbage.  Pseudo technological mumbo-jumbo, a laughable lack of
understanding regarding the possibilities and difficulties involved,
with usually a nice anti-scientific finishing touch ("Man should not
Meddle with Things He Does Not Understand"), and voila, another
airport bestseller is born. 
 
The pleasant surprise about this book is that Peter James does not
fall into any of these traps.  Quite the opposite:  The book's plot
hinges firmly on technological matters, and James tries to educate his
readers at great length.  In this, he tries to do justice both to the
larger concepts (What is artificial intelligence? What is a neural
network? How do cryonics work?) as well as to the details (What does
an e-mail session look like? What is a Turing test?). True, he doesn't
get *all* the details right *all* of the time, and since this is
science fiction, after all, there are a few major liberties taken with
the possibilities of current and future technology. But the details he
misses are really just small things, and the voodoo handwaving
involved with some of the larger plot devices is kept to a level that
is entirely acceptable. Another important issue to me is that James
does not let his personal philosophies (or even the philosophies of
his characters) intrude too much on the story. This in stark contrast
to Michael "Science is Eeeeeeevil" Crichton, for instance. 
 
So, from a techie's viewpoint I think Peter James definitely deserves
a lot of praise for "Host". But when it comes to the nuts & bolts of
the novel itself, the plot and the writing, I am not as happy with the
book as I might have been.  I suppose it is a case of damned if you
do, damned if you don't, but Peter James spends a bit *too much* time
explaining technical matters. The first half of the book, in
particular, is severely bloated with page after page of explanations
and situation set-up. In his eagerness to give us a realistic setting
for his novel, James forgets that a good thriller should also have
tension, excitement, and, well, *thrills* from the very first page.
After the first half, things start picking up a bit, but the pace
remains slow-and-steady until the last few dozen pages, and Peter
James simply never succeeds in truly sucking me into his narrative.
Perhaps this is because I have too much SF experience, and I nearly
always know exactly what is going to happen next, but a good writer
should be able to overcome that handicap. 
 
I didn't mention Michael Crichton earlier without a reason. The last
techno-thriller I read before "Host" was Crichton's "Jurassic Park",
and I inevitably started comparing the two novels. When it comes to
technical stuff, Peter James is without a shadow of doubt far superior
to Crichton. Michael Crichton uses handwaving and voodoo all the time,
his details are gibberish, and the way in which he tries to impress
his readers with fancy-schmancy (and totally nonsensical) 'screen
dumps' gets on your nerves after a while. The funny thing is that on
the surface Peter James is also a better writer the Crichton. His plot
is far more coherent, his sub-plots are better worked-out, and he uses
the cliche's of his trade less often than Crichton does (although
"Host" does feature one character who is so very obviously only
introduced in order to be killed off that it made me wince). And the
result of this superior writing style is that James can't hold my
interest, while Crichton kept me turning pages with hands that were
sweaty from tension. As a thriller, I definitely enjoyed "Jurassic
Park" more. I have no idea why this is so. 
 
Back to "Host". One final thing that bears mentioning is the way in
which Peter James describes the computing environment his characters
work in at their university:  It is a faithful rendering of a current,
1990s networked Unix environment with e-mail, rlogin, telnet, and
talk programs all playing minor, but significant roles in the story.
They are not just icing on the cake:  They actually *figure* in the
plot, and they add a level of realism that I have seldom come across
in fiction, not even in 'real' SF.  Peter James is not on the net
himself (though I understand he will soon be, and is even planning to
research his next book using the net), but the persons responsible for
advising him in this matter are, and they not only made sure that
James got his details in this matter right, but also convinced him to
throw in an occasional in-joke to "get the hackers going": I won't
spoil the major Easter egg for you, but if you read the book be on the
lookout for something that *only* a Usenet veteran would ever recognize 
as something funny. It certainly kept me grinning all evening.
 
My only complaint about the Internet stuff in the book is that the
editors for some reason decided to display all the computer
interactions in a bold-faced version of the same proportional font
used for the standard text, and to not set this text apart from the
main text. This is so stupid: the effect is to make it very difficult
to see what is going on. They should have simply used a Courier font.
The public already associates type-writer text with computer
interaction, and in this case it would have been more authentic to
boot. Oh well. 
 
I have come to the end of my review. To summarize: I enjoyed reading
this book, both because of the Internet connections and because it is
a decent attempt to write a technically sound thriller for a lay-man's
audience. Overall I feel the book could have been improved by making
it leaner and meaner, but that feeling was not so strong it spoiled my
pleasure. 
 
--
Leo Breebaart  (leo @ cp.tn.tudelft.nl)

Article: 625
From: [email protected]
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.reviews
Subject: _Joyleg_ by Ward Moore and Avram Davidson
Date: 17 Jun 1994 05:38:31 GMT
Organization: Faster-Than-Light, Atlanta GA USA, 404-292-8761
Sender: [email protected] (Michael C. Berch)
 
I haven't read anything else by Ward Moore, but Avram Davidson is been
one of my favorite writers for a couple of years.  This is one of his
best novels -- the collaboration was good for him. 
 
The front cover painting is nice (artist's name not listed), but
totally irrelevant. The back cover blurb is exaggerative, but doesn't
give away too much of the plot.  Indeed, there isn't much plot to give
away.  A female Republican representative and a male Democrat
representative discover the file of a veteran of an unspecified war
who has been receiving a pension of eleven dollars a month as far back
as the current records show.  The Hon. Lucinda Rose Habersham (R.,
Tenn.) decides it is a fraud to be exposed, someone using a long-dead
veteran's name to leech off the pension fund.    The Hon. Tully
Weathercox (D., Tenn.) declares it is an insult to throw a measly
eleven dollars a month to someone who has fought and bled to defend
his country's freedom.  They independently decide to leave during
recess and search out Isachar Joyleg.  They find him.  The second half
of the book is devoted to what happens when Joyleg's actual age is
made public. 
 
The novel's excellence comes mainly from its dialogue and
characterization.  If you're looking for a fast-moving adventure
story, look elsewhere.  If you like hilarious satire and Old Men of
the Wandering Jew/"The Gnarly Man"/Lazarus Long type, make a diligent
search for _Joyleg_. 
 
"A shorter version of this novel appeared in the March and April,
1962, issues of _Fantastic_." 
 
%A Moore, Ward
%A Davidson, Avram
%T Joyleg
%I Berkley Medallion
%C New York
%D October 1973
%G ISBN 425-02442-3
%P 191pp
 
 * SLMR 2.1a * Democracy is the most entertaining form of government.