i can has fountain of youth plz?

July 9, 2008 11:42 AM

I have a passing fascination with the concept of immortality. Where can I read more about scientific studies, crackpot theories, or even good works of fiction dealing with increasing human lifespans and/or living forever?
posted by logic vs love to science & nature (35 comments total)

Read about and stuff by Ray Kurzweil. I think he's pretty smart and on the money about some stuff, and he is devoted to living to the Singularity. But read the nutrition section on the wikipedia page for some far out stuff he does to extend his life until we reach immorality through technology.
posted by Science! at 11:50 AM on July 9

Aubrey de Grey
posted by qxntpqbbbqxl at 11:54 AM on July 9

This is tangentially related, but I just finished reading it about 10 minutes ago. Its on Calorie Restriction (which proponents hope will extend their lives until we reach the "actuarial escape velocity" where advances in science extend our lives longer than the time that passes (so if you live a year science can extend it 2 or whatever)).
posted by zennoshinjou at 11:58 AM on July 9

If you're looking for fiction, Bruce Sterling's HOLY FIRE dealth with (among other things) the problems that young people would face in a society where life extension is approaching 1 year per year. Where do young folks get promoted to if the old guys never retire?
posted by Justinian at 11:59 AM on July 9

Whatever you read, you should be drinking Chartreuse while you're reading it.
posted by [NOT HERMITOSIS-IST] at 12:02 PM on July 9

Fiction: The Seranno Legacy by Elizabeth Moon is a sci-fi series that touches on that subject. Well, kind of. Technically, the sudden availability of eternal youth (hence immortality) is the main driver behind everything that happens in the series, but it's mostly to do with the immediate fallout of people realizing their parents/bosses/etc will never die and thus they'll never get a chance of promotion, etc, rather than the long-term effects of immortality. Really good, though, if you also like military science fiction.

I'm pretty sure Orson Scott Card has also written some books (or short stories) about a kind of immortality where people can place themselves in stasis for an unlimited amount of years, so they use it to "skip" along the surface of time and kind of extend their lifespan that way ... or something. The Worthing Saga, I think?
posted by Xany at 12:04 PM on July 9

David Rakof has a great story on cryogenics in "Don't Get Too Comfortable" - I'd recommend the audio version, it's great to hear aloud.
posted by puckish at 12:04 PM on July 9

Wikipedia has a good article on immortality, but you've probably checked it out.

TED has a series of utterly fascinating videos on the topic. Of these, Aubrey de Grey's presentation is probably the most scientific in nature, although some would prefix it with "fiction". Make sure you read the Wikiepdia article on him. de Gray has founded the The Methuselah Foundation to research about anti-aging and Engineered negligible senescence (SENS, ~ immortality), he's also the editor of Rejuvenation Research, a bimonthly Journal about anti-aging and SENS. Also, British Channel 4 documentary Do You Want To Live Forever? is about de Gray.
posted by Foci for Analysis at 12:07 PM on July 9

It's one of the themes of Accelerando, by metafilter's own Charlie Stross. (freely downloadable ebook)
posted by chrisamiller at 12:08 PM on July 9

Fiction - Tuck Everlasting
posted by perpetualstroll at 12:11 PM on July 9 [1 favorite]

The Extropy Institute is deeply involved with technology's role in extending and redefining life.
posted by ISeemToBeAVerb at 12:12 PM on July 9

Robert Heinlein wrote a number of absorbing (science) fiction stories featuring a character 'Lazarus Long' who was the product of a genetic experiment in human longevity through selective breeding. He and others involved in this fictional process lived exceptionally long lives. Long enough to reach a point at which technology alone could just about guarantee physical immortality.

The novels I remember best were Methuselah's Children, Time Enough For Love and To Sail Beyond the Sunset, though there may have been others.
posted by OilPull at 12:22 PM on July 9

Aubrey de Grey! I saw a presentation from him once.

(I also got him a beer once for his birthday. A bunch of my fellow students and I took him to a local pub. It was hilarious.)
posted by kldickson at 12:24 PM on July 9

The Physics of Immortality by Frank Tipler for some bizarre metaphysical theories by a well-respected physicist.
posted by goethean at 12:44 PM on July 9

Bruce Sterling's Holy Fire revolves in part around life-extension.

Brian Stableford's Fountains of Youth is about the conquest of aging and what it's like to live for a very, very long time.
posted by adamrice at 12:50 PM on July 9

Radiolab had a great episode on the topic.
posted by Hlewagast at 1:56 PM on July 9

I just read Vitals by Greg Bear, which is a SF thriller dealing with the quest for immortality.
posted by SomePerlGeek at 1:59 PM on July 9

A major subplot of Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars trilogy (Red Mars, Green Mars, Blue Mars) is what happens when a treatment is invented that basically seems to prevent death. Much of the series deals the population problems and the social and political fallout.
posted by min at 2:03 PM on July 9

Check the wikipedia on longevity as well (of course, if you're treating solely with science rather than religion or metaphysics, immortality can only be a concept, i.e. the only way to prove you have achieved true immortality is to live forever, which, oops, give it another million years and check back. Still there? Okay, give it another... Longevity is the immediate goal. Asimov's The Last Question is worth a read for sparking thought on the question of just what "forever" might really mean.

If the immortality of your intellect or sentience or what-have-you via encoding your identity into some sort of computational system is your bag (and it seems to me really the most believable, which in this context is not saying much, bet for really long-term perpetuation of sentience), I give you the All Time Foundation. I'm given to understand that this sort of technological eschatology stuff crops up in some of the writings of a Russian intellectual Nikolai Federovich Federov, and that Roger Penrose’s book “The Emperor’s New Mind” contains discourse around if not exactly on the topic - but this is secondhand, I haven't read either. Somebody already mentioned Tipler. In fiction on this topic see also William Gibson, it's a central concept (though not really the subject of the narrative) in his Sprawl trilogy, I think his seminal treatment of it is in the short story "The Winter Market" which can be found in the collection Burning Chrome (included in link above - incidentally, the topic of more conventional technological extension of the biological lifespan also comes up a lot in those books). It is a central theme in Norman Spinrad's Deus X where the main character wrestles directly with the question of whether as a translated consciousness he is in fact a true sentient being.

Then there is the idea that Nanotechnology could deliver immortality. Trying to find a fiction book I read on the topic I came across this blog post, which might be an interesting entry into that topic. If you google Nanotechnology Immortality (which is how I got to the above) you'll get a ton of material. That's all totally speculative right now, of course, well, even more-so than just classic sort of life-extension technology. I think the book I was thinking about was Ian MacDonald's Necroville (or Terminal Cafe), which I tracked down here, the whole article is relevant.

As far as fiction on more conventional extension of longevity by medical technology or selective breeding goes, I see someone else brought up Heinlein's Lazarus Long; the problems of super-longevity are a central aspect of the character motivations of Louis Wu, the main character of Larry Niven's Ringworld series (though again, more a plot element than a central topic) and I'm pretty sure Niven has dealt with it otherwise. Here's a list with a few that haven't been mentioned yet. Finally, this just in from the obsessional-woo-woo school of website design, here's the Longevity Meme website.
posted by nanojath at 2:22 PM on July 9

Kethani, by Eric Brown, deals with the fictional situation where aliens appear and bestow reincarnation on those who want it; the story follows how this impacts on those who do - and don't take up the option. Quite an interesting thought experiment, and not too heavy on the wacky sci-fi cliches.
posted by Chunder at 2:23 PM on July 9

"You are not ready for immortality", Ambassador Kosh
posted by Freedomboy at 2:45 PM on July 9

If you want to start delving into the current scientific research (search from here), you might want to search on Telomere shortening and Cellular senescence (searching "immortality" will be of little help).
posted by kisch mokusch at 2:47 PM on July 9

It's been years since I read it, but nobody's mentioned Poul Anderson's "The Boat of a Million Years" yet, in terms of sci-fi about immortality. I will 2nd Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars series for interesting thoughts, too.
posted by Alterscape at 3:26 PM on July 9

Fiction: The Metamorphosis of Prime Intellect That's the whole novel (legally) at that link. A good description: "playful, gripping, obscene, deadly fucking serious, and fearlessly executed."
posted by NortonDC at 4:35 PM on July 9

One of my favourite books, Jitterbug Perfume, deals with two characters who become more or less immortal. I highly recommend not only because it's a great novel, but also because it's what prompted my own passing fascination with immortality.
posted by snoogles at 4:46 PM on July 9

Vernor Vinge's Marooned in Realtime is one of the best Science Fiction novels ever written, IMHO. It deals with ubiquitous radical life extension, the technological singularity, forward-only time-travel via stasis, and deep ecology. Also, its a murder mystery. I love LOVE this book.
posted by Cranialtorque at 11:07 PM on July 9

I should add that Across Realtime is a single volume that contains Marooned in Realtime plus a related novella and short story, which are both also pretty darn good.
posted by Cranialtorque at 11:12 PM on July 9

Also, the thread has tended more towards the science and science-fictional, but Anne Rice's vampire novels deal with immortality.
posted by Cranialtorque at 11:14 PM on July 9

There's already been a number of excellent suggestions from the non-fiction / speculation side of things, so I'll concentrate on the fiction:

Seconding Alterscape's suggestion of Poul Anderson's "The Boat of A Million Years". Since it traces the lives of several immortals across several thousand years, it's rather good at looking at the mental changes and enforced long perspective that very very long life might produce.

I'm surprised that no-one has yet mentioned vampires, an obvious choice for immortality treatments (of course, with the downside of the blood and the lack of sun). The modern classics are by Anne Rice: Interview with the Vampire and The Vampire Lestat being the most accessible. Both track changes across several hundred years.

Keep in mind that science fiction has a number of ways of achieving immortality, or at least living far beyond the lives of most of those you know and live, close-to-light-speed travel being one obvious possibility; perhaps best typified by Joe Haldeman's Forever War; sometimes as a side-effect of another process (Nancy Kress's Beggars In Spain), and sometimes by the upload in silico process that Kurzweil talks about (any one of a number of authors, from the very hard SF of Greg Egan through to most everything written by Ken MacLeod and Charles Stross).

For film: I'd ignore the film adaptations of Rice's vampire chronicles, and instead go for (Metafilter links supplied where appropriate): The Fountain, The Man From Earth, and Youth Without Youth (which I have not yet seen).
posted by Bora Horza Gobuchul at 11:29 PM on July 9

Aubrey de Grey is currently on tap at Slashdot for answering moderated questions on just this topic. You will find a lot of informative comment in the interview forum.
posted by ptm at 2:35 AM on July 10

The recent Xbox 360 RPG Lost Odyssey has a theme of immortality. The game's ultimately silly plot doesn't qualify as a "good work of fiction", but the short stories integrated inside are good.
posted by teki at 8:57 AM on July 10

Living forever is a main part of the Jehovah's Witnesses' religious belief. It's why they put up with no Xmas and living with huge tumors on your face. God will cure all sickness and death.
If I remember correctly, they believe that immortal life comes from eating of some special fruit that will be given to them when the earth is transformed to a paradise. I don't remember if it's a food that will magically nourish them, like manna, or if it's just a symbolic thing to parallel the forbidden fruit from the garden of eden. (They could've changed their theory, they do that a lot too).
posted by razdrez at 3:27 PM on July 10

I always thought Dune Messia was a great look at humanity as an organism from the point of view of a near imortal
posted by Redhush at 3:50 PM on July 11

Fiction: The First Immortal
posted by timepiece at 8:10 PM on July 11

Thank you for all the awesome suggestions, everyone! This will keep me busy for a while!
posted by logic vs love at 7:03 PM on July 12