X-Message-Number: 30629
From: "John de Rivaz" <>
Subject: Arthur C Clarke
Date: Wed, 19 Mar 2008 12:12:55 -0000


At least Clarke had thought about cryonics, as evidenced in many of his works of
fiction where it appeared. Some of his characters suicidally refused it even 
when it was available in the scenario. The novel "The City and the Stars" 
discusses indefinite lifespan albeit in a negative way. Suspended animation is 
used in a city where only a small portion of the total inhabitants, selected at 
random, are alive at any one time, thus giving rise to a great variation of 
social networks during each "life". Eventually someone "pulls the plug" and they
go back to the birth-life-death system.


Even if you publish something negative about indefinite lifespan, you still have
had to consider the options and the arguments.

Many "important" people don't even bother to think about it even for a minute.


At the time Clarke thought of the synchronous orbit satellite, any patent would 
have run out by the time anyone launched one. He may also have thought that 
burdening the industry with royalties could have delayed space technology. I 
don't think he patented the space elevator either, although many school children
doing a maths for mechanics class would probably come up with that idea in the 
1950s when bored with the problems actually set about "light inextensible 
strings". I know I did, and sent it in as a magazine article, which was refused.

-- 
Sincerely, John de Rivaz:  http://John.deRivaz.com for websites including
Cryonics Europe, Longevity Report, The Venturists, Porthtowan, Alec Harley
Reeves - inventor, Arthur Bowker - potter, de Rivaz genealogy,  Nomad .. and
more

 Content-Type: text/html;

[ AUTOMATICALLY SKIPPING HTML ENCODING! ] 

Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=30629