Life Styles of the Rich and Immortal on Holovision and Kurzweil's

--- In spacesettlers@yahoogroups.com, "Xenophile"
> --- In spacesettlers, "Xenophile" wrote:
>
> > I agree. But they also tend to overestimate what ordinary people will
> > put up with. And a life of aging, sickness, and death for themselves
> > and their loved ones is something up with which they will not put.
>
> Was supposed to read:
>
> ||I agree. But they also tend to overestimate what ordinary people
> will put up with. And a life of aging, sickness, and death for
> themselves and their loved ones while the rich maintain youthful
> health and vigor forever is something up with which they will not put.||
>
> "while the rich maintain youthful health and vigor forever" was what I
> had left out.

Okay, gang. Time for a reality check.

Just as there are no working space settlements, there is no proven
immortality treatment.

Consider what it takes to prove a group has had immortality treatment.

It will take at least 25 years of observing them.

It also depends on your definition of immortality.

Back in the fifties, there was a comic book (Possibly Strange
Adventures) that had a story on immortality. Some group had a quick
check. They shot the immortal. If he died, he obviously wasn't immortal!

JJ Coupling's sf story "Invariant" had the story of an immortal that
lived with his dog until the 30th century. Unfortunately his body
would go on for about an hour, then revert to exactly what it was when
he took the immortality drug. Mentally as well as physically.

And how is the human memory supposed to span even hundreds of years?

Algis Budrys had a story with an effective cover of a man with an
artifical memory cask chained to his wrist. Possibily "End of Summer"
Astounding Nov. '54.

Immortality is a very complicated matter. It might not work the way
people want it to.

Rick Brooks