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"[Science fiction] is the one literary medium left in which we have a free hand. We can do any damn thing we please."
- Alfred Bester
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| Eternity Drug | ||
| A medication that puts a person into a deep hibernation-like sleep for decades at a time. |
This is another variation on the idea of cold rest, or cold sleep.
Unfortunately, however, the Eternity drug had unpleasant side-effects for about ten percent of the people who used it.
| Poor, brave Pelham. Inventor of the Eternity drug, that had made the great plunge into interstellar space possible, he lay dead now from his own invention. |
| Technovelgy from Far Centaurus,
by A.E. van Vogt. Published by Astounding Science-Fiction in 1944 Additional resources -
|
If patients survive the initial dose, many more doses for much longer sleep can be tolerated.
Compare to the space capsule from E.R. James' 1954 story of the same name and to the escape pod from George Lucas' 1976 story Star Wars.
Compare to the frigorific process from The Senator's Daughter (1879) by Edward Page Mitchell, cold-sleep from Robert Heinlein's Methuselah's Children (1941), stasis from Heinlein's Door Into Summer (1951), the adiabatic pods from The Lady Who Sailed The Soul (1960) by Cordwainer Smith,
corpsicle from Pohl's The Age of the Pussyfoot (1965), the hibernaculum from 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) by Arthur C. Clarke, cryosleep from Flight of Exiles (1972) by Ben Bova and the EverRest Cryotorium from Roger Zelazny's Flare (1992).
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and Technology from Far Centaurus
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Tech news articles related to Far Centaurus
Tech news articles related to works by A.E. van Vogt
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| Heart Patches Grown In The Lab Repair Hearts |
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'This was their world, their planet — this swift-traveling, yet seemingly moveless vessel.'
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