Prisoners are generally prevented from killing themselves, as are the insane. What if the society of the future simply thinks it’s wrong for you to kill yourself and won’t let you do it?
There’s a general category of waking up to find yourself in a low-status situation. This would include slavery, torture, imprisonment (we don’t know what they’ll consider to be a crime), and the one I think is most likely—that you’ll simply never be able to catch up. If you’re going to be you, you’re going to have a mind which was shaped by very different circumstances from the people in the future. Life might be well worth living or intermittently well worth living, but you will never be a full member of the society.
Is there any science fiction about fairly distinct cohorts of people from different times in a high-longevity and/or cryonics society?
Prisoners are generally prevented from killing themselves, as are the insane. What if the society of the future simply thinks it’s wrong for you to kill yourself and won’t let you do it?
There’s a general category of waking up to find yourself in a low-status situation. This would include slavery, torture, imprisonment (we don’t know what they’ll consider to be a crime), and the one I think is most likely—that you’ll simply never be able to catch up. If you’re going to be you, you’re going to have a mind which was shaped by very different circumstances from the people in the future. Life might be well worth living or intermittently well worth living, but you will never be a full member of the society.
Is there any science fiction about fairly distinct cohorts of people from different times in a high-longevity and/or cryonics society?