X-Message-Number: 309 From att!CompuServe.COM!71750.2413 Thu Apr 18 20:32:48 EDT 1991 Date: 18 Apr 91 20:05:06 EDT From: "Russell E. Whitaker" <> To: <> Subject: Insert subject here... Message-Id: <"910419000506 71750.2413 EHE21-4"@CompuServe.COM> To: >INTERNET: 18 April 1991 Excerpted from Alan Batie's last posting: >As long as overcrowding isn't an issue, I agree that #1 is sufficient. If >overcrowding does become an issue, I think you'll see violence against the >storage facilities. Easily solvable. Move to Nevada. Overcrowding is a local, urban phenomenon. We'll probably have resuscitation well before we exceed the so-called "carrying capacity" of Earth. >At the risk of starting an emotional debate relatively unrelated, I don't >agree with #2 ethically, and find the thought of legal versions of the >concept (and derivatives) frightening. I couldn't agree more. >#3 will likely result in favoritism over who gets reanimated first, which, >now that I think about it, it isn't something I've seen discussed. I think >I implicitly assumed that it would be first in - first out. Is there >something in the contracts about that? There is not - and can not be - ANYTHING in the contracts about that. Try doing that for any present-day type of chronic care, upon admission. Who's to say I won't NEED a longer hospital stay? Less metaphorically, let's simply recognize the reality that the conditions of any two suspensions will simply not be the same. And the first in/first out business: extremely unlikely. It would be poetic to have Bedford emerge first, but he's going to need much more repair than the average guy suspended today, or tomorrow. I wouldn't be surprised if someone suspended a few decades down the road is treated first. >#3 also brings up the reverse thought: forward time travel, as in >Heinlein's "Door Into Summer". Another book (whose title and author >I've forgotten) had a concept about a group of people in stasis fields >whose lives were spent flitting through time, spending a while here, >a while a few years later and so on. I think you're referring to Vernor Vinge's *Marooned in Realtime*. It's great SF. The timespans these people time-tripped through were measured in geological epochs, rather than human histories. It's a fairly recent book, and still in print. I'd recommend starting with the first of the series, *The Peace War*, moving to the intermediary novella, "The Ungoverned", and finishing with MiR. Russell E. Whitaker Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=309