Category Archives: futures

dot product of Cupid’s arrows

The backstory of Methuselah’s Children, by Heinlein, involves a foundation to promote human longevity. Among other activities it studies natural long-lifers, creating its research material by paying a bounty for marriages between people whose grandparents all lived 100 years or … Continue reading

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to pass the time

If I didn’t have to worry about such mundanities as weather and fatigue — if, say, I had a synthetic antimatter-powered body with some of the traditional flaws ironed out — I think I might like to spend eternity walking … Continue reading

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getting away with progress

In Before I Hang, Boris Karloff played Doctor John Garth, a scientist seeking a serum to “cure old age”. He tries a version of the serum on himself, and color returns to his hair — but he used a multiple … Continue reading

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deathist movie

In Renaissance (2006) there’s a Big Sinister Corporation whose advertising tagline is “Health, Beauty, Longevity.” Oo, scary! I don’t think we’re ever told what Avalon sells (vitamins? cosmetics? medical treatment?) but it doesn’t matter. The noirish visual style suffices to … Continue reading

Posted in cinema, luddites | 2 Comments

a futile protest

Charlie Stross, interviewed in H+ magazine, mentions in passing . . . the more socially dysfunctional libertarians (who are convinced that if the brakes on capitalism were off, they’d somehow be teleported to the apex of the food chain in place of … Continue reading

Posted in bitterness, futures, politics | 5 Comments

to make a mark

Some work of fiction, possibly Varley’s Steel Beach, mentions a service called First Footprints that takes tourists to untrodden parts of the Moon. I’d pay extra for a temporary inflated tent so as to make bare footprints.

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O tempora, O mores!

I don’t suppose there’s any country where there wasn’t grumbling, when the French Republican system of measurement was proposed, that it is unnatural, lacking traditional measurement’s intimate link to human scale. And likewise I doubt there’s much agitation to go … Continue reading

Posted in futures, humanities | 2 Comments