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Fantasite, v. 1, issue 4, July 1941
Page 11
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11 THE FANTASITE Some Notes on the Immortals By L. R. Chauvenet Men hate death, and yet they know that all men--themselves included--must die. And because this is so, men have dreamed of eternal life, draughts of immortality, and fountains of youth--and they have also mocked at such unattainable dreams, saying that perhaps after all the thing beyond their reach would be no blessing, but instead a curse. To reject the unattainable as unworthy of striving for may indeed be good practical psychology, as Aesop well knew, and yet, since from the beginning of time no men have been immortal, judgments on the desirability of immortality must still seem rather idle speculations. The theme is one in which science fiction authors have long been interested, and many are the types of immortality which they have proposed. Carrel's famous chicken-heart, preserved alive in solutions, is the obvious parent of a number of stories concerning preservation of the head or brain. Thus, Kleier's "The Head" was kept alive by taking over the functions of the heart and other organs with pumps, blood purifiers, and so on, but it could not use its severed vocal cords, and performance remained mute, becoming eventually an object of semi-religious veneration until an enemy invader dropped a spanner[[?]] on it. Stangland's "Ancient Brain" was simply pickled for a few thousand years and then planted in the skull of a man who had died of brain injuries, but it had no conscious life during its extra-body existence, and once back in a body, it was mortal as any other organism. Dr. Keller attacked this aspect of the problem twice, proposing the "Cerebral Library" as a hook-up of several hundred pickled but conscious brains, repositories of technical and other information, and also taking up the concept of "Eternal Professors" kept alive just as Kleier's head, but retaining powers of speech and full mental faculties. In "Voice from the Void" Simak attributed to the Martians the ability to pickle brains, which remained in a state of unconsciousness unless stimulated to a certain extent by electrical means. Simak mentions the possibility of eternal torture, by simply turning on the electricity a shade too high, and this illustrates the one tremendous defect of all such schemes--the person seeking immortality is wholly and completely dependent upon quite mortal and fallible attendents--Keller's"professors", for example, were poisoned by a bribed technician. Evidently this is not a type of survival that would appeal to many people -- certainly not to me. Other authors have probably been correct in reasoning that if it were possible to keep a brain alive, it would probably be even simpler to keep the whole organism alive, and for this purpose many fictitious potions of marvelous powers have been concocted. Perhaps among the most typical are Bernal's "Draught of Immortality", which, together with Stribling's "Plague of the Living Dead" ,illustrates "absolute" immortality, that is, immunity from burns, poisons, bullets, and accidents of all kinds. In the first story, as also in Eberle's "Mordant" which does not prevent accidents, immortality is pictured as highly undesirable, owing to loneliness, tedium, or other similar causes. I might venture to suggest here that any immortality which left the immortals feeling unhappy and ill at ease must be in some way defective, just as any cure for sleep which left people
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11 THE FANTASITE Some Notes on the Immortals By L. R. Chauvenet Men hate death, and yet they know that all men--themselves included--must die. And because this is so, men have dreamed of eternal life, draughts of immortality, and fountains of youth--and they have also mocked at such unattainable dreams, saying that perhaps after all the thing beyond their reach would be no blessing, but instead a curse. To reject the unattainable as unworthy of striving for may indeed be good practical psychology, as Aesop well knew, and yet, since from the beginning of time no men have been immortal, judgments on the desirability of immortality must still seem rather idle speculations. The theme is one in which science fiction authors have long been interested, and many are the types of immortality which they have proposed. Carrel's famous chicken-heart, preserved alive in solutions, is the obvious parent of a number of stories concerning preservation of the head or brain. Thus, Kleier's "The Head" was kept alive by taking over the functions of the heart and other organs with pumps, blood purifiers, and so on, but it could not use its severed vocal cords, and performance remained mute, becoming eventually an object of semi-religious veneration until an enemy invader dropped a spanner[[?]] on it. Stangland's "Ancient Brain" was simply pickled for a few thousand years and then planted in the skull of a man who had died of brain injuries, but it had no conscious life during its extra-body existence, and once back in a body, it was mortal as any other organism. Dr. Keller attacked this aspect of the problem twice, proposing the "Cerebral Library" as a hook-up of several hundred pickled but conscious brains, repositories of technical and other information, and also taking up the concept of "Eternal Professors" kept alive just as Kleier's head, but retaining powers of speech and full mental faculties. In "Voice from the Void" Simak attributed to the Martians the ability to pickle brains, which remained in a state of unconsciousness unless stimulated to a certain extent by electrical means. Simak mentions the possibility of eternal torture, by simply turning on the electricity a shade too high, and this illustrates the one tremendous defect of all such schemes--the person seeking immortality is wholly and completely dependent upon quite mortal and fallible attendents--Keller's"professors", for example, were poisoned by a bribed technician. Evidently this is not a type of survival that would appeal to many people -- certainly not to me. Other authors have probably been correct in reasoning that if it were possible to keep a brain alive, it would probably be even simpler to keep the whole organism alive, and for this purpose many fictitious potions of marvelous powers have been concocted. Perhaps among the most typical are Bernal's "Draught of Immortality", which, together with Stribling's "Plague of the Living Dead" ,illustrates "absolute" immortality, that is, immunity from burns, poisons, bullets, and accidents of all kinds. In the first story, as also in Eberle's "Mordant" which does not prevent accidents, immortality is pictured as highly undesirable, owing to loneliness, tedium, or other similar causes. I might venture to suggest here that any immortality which left the immortals feeling unhappy and ill at ease must be in some way defective, just as any cure for sleep which left people
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