I’d like to see more stories which present superlongevity as the default and normal state, then subvert our assumptions about “the human condition.” Damon Knight did that in an interesting way in the 1950′s with his story “The Dying Man.” The negligibly senescent female protagonist, when she hears that her boyfriend has developed a mysterious ailment called “aging” which will eventually kill him, exclaims, “But that doesn’t happen to people!”
Two or three years ago, Analog published a story (the title escapes me) which heavily plagiarizes Knight’s story and could just about substitute for it.
I’d like to see more stories which present superlongevity as the default and normal state, then subvert our assumptions about “the human condition.” Damon Knight did that in an interesting way in the 1950′s with his story “The Dying Man.” The negligibly senescent female protagonist, when she hears that her boyfriend has developed a mysterious ailment called “aging” which will eventually kill him, exclaims, “But that doesn’t happen to people!”
My scan of that story:
https://www.box.com/shared/static/6vgqnt03vc.pdf
Two or three years ago, Analog published a story (the title escapes me) which heavily plagiarizes Knight’s story and could just about substitute for it.