Science Fiction
Dictionary Latest By
"I do think there is a link in that in both cases, writing fiction or writing a computer program, at any given moment you're focusing on a very specific and particular thing—one word, one line of code, whatever."
|
The basic idea is simple; freeze the person so they can be revived later. Small insects, for example, have been frozen and then revived successfully. Human embryos are routinely frozen, thawed and used to create viable human fetuses. Children have been revived after immersion in very cold water for up to an hour. But what do you call a person who has been frozen?
Larry Niven offers some helpful etymological material in his use of the word from his 1971 novel A World Out of Time:
"Your newspapers called you people corpsicles," said the blond man. "I never understood what the tapes meant by that."
"It comes from Popsicle. Frozen sherbet." Corbell had used the word himself before he became one of them. One of the corpsicles, the frozen dead.
More than 100 people have been frozen since the first person placed in "cryonic suspension" 1967. Alcor provides you with some options; just have your head frozen for $50,000, or have your whole body frozen for $120,000.
Interestingly, Alcor does not really freeze your tissues:
And, best of all, the root word for "quiescently" means "in a restful state." Requiescat in pace, popsiculo.
Apparently, many science fiction writers were offered free services, and turned it down. Robert Heinlein said “How do I know it won’t interfere with my next stage?” Isaac Asimov said “I don’t think I should impose any kind of cost on the future, even the cost of just topping off my nitrogen.”
Not quite ready to be a popsicle? Try a few months in the hibernaculum, from 2001: A Space Odyssey by Arthur C. Clarke.
Compare to Suspended Animation (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) and the EverRest Cryotorium from Roger Zelazny's Flare (1992). Comment/Join this discussion ( 1 ) | RSS/XML | Blog This | Additional
resources: Corpsicle-related
news articles:
Want to Contribute an
Item?
It's easy:
|
Science Fiction
Timeline
SpaceX Wants A Moonbase Alpha
'And he had been sent with troops, supplies and bombs to command Russia's most trusted post, the Moonbase.'
Vast Apartment Living Will Get Even More Vast
'What is your population', I asked. 'About eighty millions.'
NASA Wants Self-Driving Or Remote-Controlled Vehicles For Lunar Astronauts
'THE autobus turned silently down the wide street of Hydropole. Robot-guided, insulated from noise and cold...'
Elon Musk Says Robotaxis Will Be Ready This August, 2024
'The car had no steering wheel, and no one drove!'
Moonwalkers AI-Controlled Electric Shoes
Now that's power walking that Hugo Gernsback would have approved.
Steve Jobs: 'Capture The Next Aristotle - With AI'
'It was disturbing to think of the Flatline as a construct...'
No Tips! Robotic Food Delivery In Phoenix
'...he rewired the delivery robot so that it would serve him midnight snacks.'
Electric Catamaran 'Explorer Eco 40m' Has 'Solar Skin'
'On went the electric-yacht faster and still faster.'
Orbital Mechanics, The Liftoff, The Turnover, The Retrograde Burn
'...the huge vessel had spun, with a sickening lurch, through a complete half-circle, the instant the power was reversed.'
Harvest Power From Tears And Blinking With Smart Contact Lens
'...he realized that it was not quite a clear lens. Speckles of colored brightness swirled and gathered in it.'
|
Home | Glossary
| Science Fiction Timeline | Category | New | Contact
Us | FAQ | Advertise | Technovelgy.com - where science meets fiction™ Copyright© Technovelgy LLC; all rights reserved. |
||