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"Science fiction is what scientists would do if they could - if they had enough grant money, enough time, and enough brains to do the wonderful things they would like to do."
- Greg Bear

Corpsicle  
  Cryogenically frozen person who could (hopefully) be revived later.  

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?

No corpsicle has yet been thawed and returned to life, and there's no firm estimate of when one will be.
Technovelgy from The Age of The Pussyfoot, by Frederik Pohl.
Published by Ballantine in 1966
Additional resources -

Larry Niven offers some helpful etymological material in his use of the word from his 1971 novel A World Out of Time:

And there was this frozen thing.

"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.

Written as "corpseicle", the word can be found earlier, but not in a science fiction story. Writing in Report on the Slow Freeze, published in Worlds of Tomorrow in 1966, RCW Ettinger:

Ev Cooper, who fortunately has independent means, devotes full time to the work without remuneration. His wife, Mildred, has made many contributions, including a new name for the frozen, brittle people; Homo Snapiens, (This is certainly more dignified than Fred Pohl’s “corpsesicles.” I think it was also she who summarized the recent situation by saying, “Many are cold, but few are frozen.”

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:

Alcor's most advanced procedure is called "vitrification". In vitrification more than 60% of the water inside cells is replaced by a mixture of cryoprotectant (antifreeze) compounds so that tissue does not freeze (or freezes negligibly) during cooling. Instead, below a temperature of -130 degrees Celsius, the tissue becomes a rigid glass with no ice crystal damage. Chemistry is stopped, and tissue is stable essentially indefinitely.
The reason I find this interesting is because a popsicle is not really frozen either; it is a "quiescently frozen treat" according to the labels. Popsicle makers use stabilizing ingredients to keep the flavoring agent, color, sugar and other elements from separating from the ice as the water freezes at 32 degrees Fahrenheit.

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).

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Additional resources:
  More Ideas and Technology from The Age of The Pussyfoot
  More Ideas and Technology by Frederik Pohl
  Tech news articles related to The Age of The Pussyfoot
  Tech news articles related to works by Frederik Pohl

Corpsicle-related news articles:
  - Terasem Conference On Law Of Transhuman Persons
  - Dynasty Trusts Lively Topic For Corpsicles
  - Owada's Freezing Method Vs. Carbonite
  - KrioRus Brain Freeze Technology
  - Cryonics Movement Loses Founder (Temporarily)

Articles related to Medical
ErythroMer Artificial Blood
MouthPad Supports Head And Tongue Tracking
Drug Induces Hibernation-Like State In Humans
Drug To Regenerate Teeth In Humans

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