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"If you don't care about science enough to be interested in it on its own, you shouldn't try to write hard science fiction."
- Frederik Pohl
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| Sprung-Samser Treatment | ||
| A medical treatment to extend human life. |
As you might guess from the title, this book treats different aspects of how a person might live a long time, as well as what a person might do with a long life.
Conrad Nomikos (who has had a variety of names over the course of his long life) was born long-lived through a (non-natural) mutation. Hasan the Assassin, however, gained his extra years with a special medical treatment.
| Eighty or ninety or more, looking about forty, [Hasan] could still act thirty. the Sprung-Samser treatments had found highly responsive material. It's not often that way. Almost never, in fact. They put some people into accelerated anaphylactic shock for no apparent reason, and even an intracardial blast of adrenalin won't haul them back; others, most others, they freeze at five or six decades. But some rare ones actually grow younger when they take the series - about one in a hundred thousand.
It struck me as odd that in destiny's big shooting gallery this one should make it, in such a big way. |
| Technovelgy from This Immortal,
by Roger Zelazny. Published by Ace Science Fiction in 1966 Additional resources -
|
From immortality granted by the gods to the Fountain of Youth, human beings have been fascinated by how a person might live longer. At the present, the only treatment known to extend life in mammals is an extremely low calorie diet.
It was apparently a series of treatments:
The Sprung-Samser treatments could extend human life to the 150-year range.
Compare to young blood - new blood for old from Methuselah's Children (1941) by Robert Heinlein,
conscious retarded animation from A Race Through Time (1933) by Donald Wandrei, the
anti-Tri-D shot from The Morning of the Day They Did It (1950) by E.B. White and the
anti-agathic drugs from Cities in Flight (1957) by James Blish.
"I've pushed the S-S series about as far as it can go. I fancy I can feel the mainspring winding down now. Maybe it will take a few more windings and maybe it won't...
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Additional
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More Ideas
and Technology from This Immortal
More Ideas
and Technology by Roger Zelazny
Tech news articles related to This Immortal
Tech news articles related to works by Roger Zelazny
Sprung-Samser Treatment-related
news articles:
- Can Sirtuins Block The Aging Process?
| Illustrating Classic Heinlein With AI |
| Brainoware Reservoir Computation Of Biological Neural Networks |
| Forward CarePod The AI Doctor's Office |
| Octopus Suckers Inspire Transdermal Patches |
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'... making the point that their likenesses, every move they made, were being transmitted.'
'But the stars are only atoms in larger space, and in that larger space the star-atoms could combine to form living matter, thinking matter, couldn't they?'
'...to build up a video picture would require, say, ten million decisions every second. Mike, you're so fast I can't even think about it. But you aren't that fast.'
'The area affected was five hundred kilometres across, and perfectly circular.'
'Hasan always pitched a Gauzy - a one-molecule-layer tent, opaque, feather-light, and very tough.'
'And he had been sent with troops, supplies and bombs to command Russia's most trusted post, the Moonbase.'
'What is your population', I asked. 'About eighty millions.'
'THE autobus turned silently down the wide street of Hydropole. Robot-guided, insulated from noise and cold...'
