X-Message-Number: 5974 From: (Steven B. Harris/Virginia George ) Newsgroups: sci.cryonics Subject: Re: Larry Niven and Bryonics Date: 18 Mar 1996 07:13:27 GMT Message-ID: <4ij2en$> References: <> <> In <> writes: > >John de Rivaz <> writes: > >>"Age of the Pussyfoot" concerning cryonics, but he failed to accept the >>offer of a free suspension when made by Alcor staff some years back and is >>now annihilated. > > Yes, I remember reading of that. Damn shame. I vaguely remember a 70's >article in Penthouse (don't have the issue, read it while waiting in a >barber shop) where, after making arguments against cryonics, Asimov also >made it clear in the end that he didn't want it for himself, even if it >did work. The last words of the story still stick in my mind: "As for >myself, I prefer oblivion." Yeah, Asimov was pretty socialistic. Half his fiction involves people apologizing for their long lives, or else getting some project finally up and going by dying and decomposing. I personally sent Asimov at his home address in NY, a full package of cryonics material 6 months before he died. At this time, he was sick and could not work, but was able to still think. He didn't think hard enough. His last words as he went into final shock at the end were: "I want...Isaac Asimov." I assume he meant the old Isaac Asimov, polymath. I don't think he liked his mind and his identity being squinched off slowly into nothingness, when it finally got down to it. But by that time he had no choice. I'm always amazed at the scientific socialist-atheist types like Sagan and Asimov who will go on and on about mankind, and how individuals are less important, and yet when it comes time for the end of their own lives, will have bypasses and more bypasses, and bone marrow transplants, and so on and so on. You'd think that minds of this caliber would be smart enough to see the contradiction. At least Albert Einstein at the end told his surgeons all to go away, and leave him alone with his GR calculations, to die in peace if that was what was going to happen. Which it did. > Anyone know if there are any SF writers (besides Charles Platt) who have >made suspension arrangements, and have gone public with the fact? (I gather >Arthur Clarke is sympathetic to the idea, but I don't know if he'll do it hif I don't. I know one famous one who has done it in private, though. We'll have SF writers doing it in public soon enough. Steve Harris, M.D. Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=5974