Five Stories Featuring Cryonics and Suspended Animation

Why settle for Netflix and Chill when you could have the more authentic
experience of liquid nitrogen and chill?

https://www.tor.com/2023/11/21/five-stories-featuring-cryonics-and-suspended-animation/
--
My reviews can be found at http://jamesdavisnicoll.com/
My tor pieces at https://www.tor.com/author/james-davis-nicoll/
My Dreamwidth at https://james-davis-nicoll.dreamwidth.org/
My patreon is at https://www.patreon.com/jamesdnicoll

On 11/21/2023 9:07 AM, James Nicoll wrote:
> Five Stories Featuring Cryonics and Suspended Animation
>
> Why settle for Netflix and Chill when you could have the more authentic
> experience of liquid nitrogen and chill?
>
>
> https://www.tor.com/2023/11/21/five-stories-featuring-cryonics-and-suspended-animation/

One for five here, the awesome "Cryoburn".

I have a 2013 book to add to the list, "Love Minus Eighty" by Will McIntosh:
https://www.amazon.com/Love-Minus-Eighty-Will-McIntosh/dp/0316217786/

Here is my four star review, "A non series book, the third novel by
McIntosh. Could be viewed as set in the same universe as his first
novel, _Soft Apocalypse_, which I found to be excellent. The book is a
well formatted trade paperback with a translucent cover, the first that
I have seen on a trade paperback."

"This novel is a major expansion of McIntosh's 2010 Hugo winning short
story, _Bridesicle_. The novel starts in 2100 and finishes in 2130. It
explores how social media drives and overwhelms everything in human
society. At least the society inthe way over crowded cities."

"Along the way, the human race gained the ability to freeze people upon
death for future revival. Then they gained the ability to revive
people. At twenty million dollars per revival."

Lynn

On 2023-11-21, James Nicoll <jdnicoll@panix.com> wrote:

> Five Stories Featuring Cryonics and Suspended Animation

This is a ridiculously common trope. Buck Rogers anyone? There
have been any number of movies and TV shows around this. I mean,
there is even a Louis de Funès film (_Hibernatus_).

--
Christian "naddy" Weisgerber naddy@mips.inka.de

James Nicoll wrote:

>Five Stories Featuring Cryonics and Suspended Animation
>
>Why settle for Netflix and Chill when you could have the more
>authentic experience of liquid nitrogen and chill?

One of the Gil The ARM stories by Niven, "The Defenseless Dead"
featured the ongoing problem of the public's insatiable desire for
replacement organs and the people in cryo-suspension.

There are some who had medical issues, including now curable insanity,
and have financial resources in trust. Then there were young people who
wanted to use the system as a way to time-travel to the future.

Those "freezer kids" have already gone into the organ banks. Now the
banks are running low, organlegging is on the rise, and a second
"Freezer Bill" targeting more of potential resources.

Ann Leckie's Ancillary series features some sort of suspension. The
Ancillary-crewed ships have people in suspension to be "thawed" (it's
not exactly clear what the preservation method is. Seivarden spent 1000
years in suspension in an escape capsule.

Roger MacBride Allen's Chronicles of Solace books have an FTL system
that consists of the ships travelling with passengers in
cryo-suspension or similar and the crew in time-stasis. Then the ships
go through time-travel wormholes.

Brian

Brian

On Wednesday, 22 November 2023 at 22:30:11 UTC, Christian Weisgerber wrote:
> On 2023-11-21, James Nicoll <jdni...@panix.com> wrote:
>
> > Five Stories Featuring Cryonics and Suspended Animation
> This is a ridiculously common trope. Buck Rogers anyone? There
> have been any number of movies and TV shows around this. I mean,
> there is even a Louis de Funès film (_Hibernatus_).

And a Woody Allen, _The Sleeper_ (1973).
And Roger Moore as 1960s adventurer
_The Saint_ encountered "The Man Who Gambled
With Life", who wanted to freeze the Saint - in
order to test the process to use on himself.
_The Champions_, super-powered, encountered
"The Body Snatchers" at about the same time,
who kidnapped dead people. The hero of
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adam_Adamant_Lives!>
was frozen in 1902, and emerged in 1966.

In article <ujpmhp$28ilj$1@dont-email.me>,
Default User <defaultuserbr@yahoo.com> wrote:
>James Nicoll wrote:
>
>>Five Stories Featuring Cryonics and Suspended Animation
>>
>>Why settle for Netflix and Chill when you could have the more
>>authentic experience of liquid nitrogen and chill?
>
>One of the Gil The ARM stories by Niven, "The Defenseless Dead"
>featured the ongoing problem of the public's insatiable desire for
>replacement organs and the people in cryo-suspension.
>
>There are some who had medical issues, including now curable insanity,
>and have financial resources in trust. Then there were young people who
>wanted to use the system as a way to time-travel to the future.
>
>Those "freezer kids" have already gone into the organ banks. Now the
>banks are running low, organlegging is on the rise, and a second
>"Freezer Bill" targeting more of potential resources.
>
>
>Ann Leckie's Ancillary series features some sort of suspension. The
>Ancillary-crewed ships have people in suspension to be "thawed" (it's
>not exactly clear what the preservation method is. Seivarden spent 1000
>years in suspension in an escape capsule.
>
>
>Roger MacBride Allen's Chronicles of Solace books have an FTL system
>that consists of the ships travelling with passengers in
>cryo-suspension or similar and the crew in time-stasis. Then the ships
>go through time-travel wormholes.
>
>

E.C. Tubb's Dumarest setting has space travel as either "Low" or "High".
If you ride High you make the trip on metabolic slowing drugs so that a
game of cards could take months. If you ride "Low" they freeze you and
it's a *lot* less expensive. Unfortunately there's a 10% chance you die.

In Carter's Gondwane series, there are constructs, great
heroes, in suspended animation in the Time Vaults, and at times
forseen by the Time Gods, they are programmed and released into the world
to avert the current crisis. Unfortunately Ganelon Silverman didn't get
the pre-reading on his release..

Ganelon ruminated on this for a bit, then spoke up with
another of those surprisingly intelligent insights that the
Illusionist was beginning to respect.

"Maybe I am supposed to fight those forces you said were
threatening these lands."

"That's a very intelligent guess. But I don't think so; I
am myself strong enough to deal with them, or such is my
opinion, anyway--although I will be grateful for your help
in those matters. No, these are merely local troubles I am
going to deal with: you were sent to help the whole world
from some impending doom that threatens all men, everywhere."

"How can ypu know that for certain?"

The magician laughed behind his veil of lavender mist. "My
dear boy! I know hardly anything for certain: that is
supposedly the first step toward true wisdom. I hope so!
But, no, Ganelon, really. The only other time we know for
sure that the Time Gods sent a Construct into the world it
was to save Grand Velademar; in so doing, Cal-idondarius
saved the entire world, that is to say, the Future of Man.
Such as it is."

Ganelon wrinkled his nose. "Cal ... Calidon--?"

"--darius; better known as the Thinker of Aopharz. Did your
father ever teach you about him?"

"I don't think so. But there's a statue of him in the square
before the Hegemon's palace. A diorite statue, very big;
bigger, even, than the one of the First Hegemon." "Quite
right. Without him, there wouldn't have been any First
Hegemon, or anything else, today. You see, there was once
a time when all of human civilization had been reduced to
one small country, the Thirtieth Empire it is called. It
was almost the Last Empire, because except for Grand Velademar
all the rest of Gondwane was a savage wilderness where
dangerous beasts and wild, uncivilized Nonhumans fought
each other for supremacy. When the Thinker was released
from his Time Vault, at a place called Aopharz, the end of
the world was only a thousand years away. A barbarian horde
was arising in Farj and Quonseca; in time it would sweep
across Gondwane, trampling the Thirtieth Empire into the
dust, slaying or enslaving the last True Men. This could
have been the extinction of mankind; at very least, it would
have meant the end of our civilization. But nobody knew the
Green Jehad was coming, or that the terrible Urghazkoy Horde
was forming. Nobody in the world knew. But the Time Gods
knew. They had known it ages before. They were long since
dead themselves; but they had left a superman sleeping in
the Aopharz Vault to deal with that peril, when it arose."

"What did this Calidondarius do, exactly?" asked Ganelon.

"Nothing very important. He was no warrior, no strong man
like you. He was a scholar, what used to be called a
'scientist,' when there was such a thing as science, before
the laws of nature started to change, and the world to
change with them. He kept a science from dying, that's all.
He kept three books alive; he taught young people the science
called solesmic bionomaly; that's all. Nobody alive today
even knows what that term represents, or what that strange
science was supposed to do. But, long after the Thinker
himself was dust, a thousand years later when the Green
Jehad moved across the breadth of Gondwane from south to
north, destroying everything in its path, enough people
still knew how to use solesmic bionomaly, to stop the
Urghazkoy."

"What did they do?"

The Illusionist went over to the wall in which there was,
quite suddenly, a window, or what looked like a window.
Through it the enormous silver rondure of the Falling Moon
glared down at Old Earth. He pointed.

"There they are, the Urghazkoy. They must be very far beyond
the Moon by now, halfway to Mars maybe, or entering the
asteroids."

"But how--"

The Illusionist shrugged and yawned; he was getting a trifle sleepy.

"Nobody knows. But when the Horde swept down the valley to
ride against Grand Velademar, last of the human civilizations,
they rode ... elsewhere, instead; and they are still riding...

Ganelon looked at the Moon.

Suddenly he felt cold and alone and very-frightened.
Frightened of what? He did not know. Frightened, perhaps,
of what was someday to come, when he should stand against
doom and strive to save the world from something he did not
understand.
--
columbiaclosings.com
What's not in Columbia anymore..