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Another interesting treatment of "immortality" in fiction is the Chasm City/Glitter Band/Yellowstone society from Alastair Reynolds' novels. Rather than achiev

Another interesting treatment of "immortality" in fiction is the Chasm City/Glitter Band/Yellowstone society from Alastair Reynolds' novels. Rather than achieving true immortality through some one-off miracle pill a la Golden Age pulps, "immortality" is a sequence of stopgaps - one life-extension therapy gives an individual enough time for science to advance to the point where it comes up with another extension. Rinse and repeat for eternity (or until your nanotech goes crazy and melts you from the inside out, whoops). The sociological consequences of a system like this, where maintaining your immortality through the pursuit of enough wealth, prestige and tech to get your hands on the hottest new therapies becomes practically a raison d'etre in and of itself, are an interesting contrast to Banks' utopianism. I'd love for us to go Culture, but I'm not holding my breath. On the other hand, I wouldn't be surprised to see some variation of the therapy-chain thing during my natural lifespan.

thatoneuser 7y ago
Eh I assume medical science will be an exponential curve where this chain would only be a thing for the oldest generation that goes through it. I mean 100ish years ago cocaine was a cure all and now we have a protein that can individually identify and replace genes.
lukaszkups 7y ago
and other one is "Futu.re" by Dmitry Glukhovsky - it presents in a very interesting way how it splited the society - really recommend it.
Junk_Collector 7y ago
There is also the Niven take on cheap immortality where people just become incredibly BORED with life after a few hundreds years, reinventions, and "mid-life" crises. Inevitably they turn to increasingly extreme pursuits as they age and run out of lifestyles to try and an average life expectancy develops organically. It's interesting to note that he also wrote some about the style of immortality described by Alastair Reynold's and the cheap immortality of his "Known Universe/Ringworld" novels is after that time period in which longevity has become cheap, commoditized, and easily affordable by all.
- thechao 7y ago
  There was a reddit conversation years ago where some actuaries discussed all-causes mortality for an immortal. If you factored out death by natural causes (cancer, heart, ...) you still ended up with a mean time to death of ~3100 years. That is, all of the possible accidents in life pile up & kill you. For instance, live long enough and you will be struck by lightning — the survivability of which is very low!
- Fjolsvith 7y ago
  Time Enough for Love by Robert Heinlein. Main character lives over 3000 years and is kept from suiciding by his descendants. He grew bored and tired with life. The love story at the center of the book made me cry.

thatoneuser 7y ago

Eh I assume medical science will be an exponential curve where this chain would only be a thing for the oldest generation that goes through it. I mean 100ish years ago cocaine was a cure all and now we have a protein that can individually identify and replace genes.

lukaszkups 7y ago

and other one is "Futu.re" by Dmitry Glukhovsky - it presents in a very interesting way how it splited the society - really recommend it.

Junk_Collector 7y ago

There is also the Niven take on cheap immortality where people just become incredibly BORED with life after a few hundreds years, reinventions, and "mid-life" crises. Inevitably they turn to increasingly extreme pursuits as they age and run out of lifestyles to try and an average life expectancy develops organically. It's interesting to note that he also wrote some about the style of immortality described by Alastair Reynold's and the cheap immortality of his "Known Universe/Ringworld" novels is after that time period in which longevity has become cheap, commoditized, and easily affordable by all.

thechao 7y ago
There was a reddit conversation years ago where some actuaries discussed all-causes mortality for an immortal. If you factored out death by natural causes (cancer, heart, ...) you still ended up with a mean time to death of ~3100 years. That is, all of the possible accidents in life pile up & kill you. For instance, live long enough and you will be struck by lightning — the survivability of which is very low!
Fjolsvith 7y ago
Time Enough for Love by Robert Heinlein. Main character lives over 3000 years and is kept from suiciding by his descendants. He grew bored and tired with life. The love story at the center of the book made me cry.