X-Message-Number: 19079 Date: Wed, 15 May 2002 14:24:52 +1000 From: Damien Broderick <> Subject: Re: A.C.C. Rudi asks: >Still alive and very active, and still writing books about cryonic >suspension, is Arthur C. Clarke. >But this author of Childhood's End, 2001, 2010, and a lot of books with >cryonics as an assumed technology is not signed up. I've asked Arthur about this several times; he simply says that he's not interested, on several grounds. The principal one appears to be his sense that individuals have no true continuity during a lifetime, that we rewrite ourselves progressively over the decades. (Even so, no-one suicides just because in a decade we will be someone else; and besides, it's not really true, since we morph only by slow stages, embodying into the new butterfly much of the old chrysalis.) Another is that he would be obliged to leave behind beloved friends and especially pets. (Why not ensure their preservation as well when they die?) And I suspect projected culture shock is part of it; already, he has lived through appallingly disruptive changes, and even a fellow as far-seeing as Sir Arthur Clarke is understandably reluctant to awaken in a future almost unbearably disjunct from his past--even if those who revive and rejuvenate the preserved are wonderful psychologists, and the newly awakened live for as long as they wish in a comforting transitional enclave. Damien Broderick Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=19079