Peter F. Hamilton has similar technology in his Commonwealth novels. It’s used in the worst-case scenario when someone’s body is destroyed, because the technology to rejuvenate human bodies to a youthful state is the main form of immortality.
Actually, Varley’s world has that too, though it’s a near-future enough setting that it hasn’t really sunk in.
That is, nobody has died of old age except voluntarily in the last few decades, but everyone is still used to thinking of themselves as living a few score years.
The narrator in Steel Beach has just turned 100, and this is a recurring theme… she/he/it doesn’t feel old, and in fact isn’t old by any normal understanding of the word, but “turning 100” nevertheless has cultural associations with being old.
Peter F. Hamilton has similar technology in his Commonwealth novels. It’s used in the worst-case scenario when someone’s body is destroyed, because the technology to rejuvenate human bodies to a youthful state is the main form of immortality.
(nods)
Actually, Varley’s world has that too, though it’s a near-future enough setting that it hasn’t really sunk in.
That is, nobody has died of old age except voluntarily in the last few decades, but everyone is still used to thinking of themselves as living a few score years.
The narrator in Steel Beach has just turned 100, and this is a recurring theme… she/he/it doesn’t feel old, and in fact isn’t old by any normal understanding of the word, but “turning 100” nevertheless has cultural associations with being old.