We’re going to a funeral today. It’s for one of Mark’s uncles – not someone I knew well. But it’s the latest in a string of funerals over the last several years.
I’m reaching that age, I guess, where many of my friends and family members are passing on. In the last two years for the two of us, that’s included a grandmother, a mother, a dear friend, an uncle, a step mother, and several others.
It’s made me reflect on family and life and death. And in the sci fi context, it’s made me think about immortality.
I always assumed, growing up, that we’d figure out the whole death thing in our lifetimes. That I’d have the possibility to go on for a lot longet than my parents or grandparents. But I gotta say, they seem to be taking their own sweet time on it.
Peter Hamilton has explored this in several of his books, especially in Misspent Youth, where the first human to be “rejuvenated” makes a horrible mess of his life as his hormones kick in.
So sci-fi wise, do you think we’re getting close to immortality of one form or another, or at least vastly extended lives? If so, by what method? And what ramifications would this have on our culture in general, and on the LGBT community in particular?
Discuss. :)
Immortality…a blessing and a curse by my own opinion.
We see so many vampire movies, etc that show these immortal beings; and I wonder what it would be like to live for centuries as the world grows and changes, and to see all of it happening.
Medical science is marvelous, and people are living longer than they have in millenia (based on stories of Methuseluah)…
I’d love to see my folks live another 100 years, and myself too; but death is part of life too.
It’s all a quandry, but is terrific sci-fi and I do think it’ll happen sooner than we think.