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Fantasite, v. 1, issue 4, July 1941
Page 12
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THE FANTASITE 12 still desiring sleep would be inefficient. Returning to Stribling's tale, we have here the suggestion that when a dead body is waked to life, it lacks a soul and behaves in strictly an animal fashion. This is not a very convincing doctrine, since many apparently dead persons have been resuscitated and seemed none the worse for it. An "elixir" story which deserves separate mention is Keller's "Life Everlasting." Despite the fact that the serum in question cures all diseases and brings about perfect physical and mental health, it has the defect of inducing sterility, and Keller offers it as his opinion that after a few years of childlessness the women would find their lives intolerable because incomplete. in a sense, Keller is certainly right, for there is obviously no biological future for a race which has ceased to produce children, irrespective of the life tenure of the adults. The idea of transferring the personality to another body, or, alternatively, of using some unfortunate donor's fresh young blood to make an aged body young, has also seen considerable service. The latter method is excellently described in Miller's "The Master Shall Not Die," in which the survivor is described as a beneficient co:ordinator of scientific work. The outright transferral theme is found in Hamilton's "Intelligence Undying". Where the would-be immortal transfers his brain-pattern to the plastic brain of a new born infant, killing his old body, but leaving the child to grow up with all the memories of a past adult life. This is an interesting idea, and although it involves a certain amount of wasted time and dependence on others while the child is growing up, it seems more logical than Lovecraft's mind-exchange system used by the "Great Race" in "The Shadow out of Time." This system is perhaps unique among the immortality methods we have been considering, in that the mind seeing a new body could go forward into the future or back into the past, and force the exchange with the mind of any intelligent creature. Thus, the minds of those of the Great Race who desired immortality were virtually secure against destruction. Certain forms of quasi-immortality have occasionally been mentioned which sound far from attractive--Manning & Pratt's "City of the Living Dead", where the dependency on outside control to change the sleep adventures is a great drawback, and Sharp's "Eternal Man", frozen into immobility, but not dead or even unconscious. Thus, by elimination, we have been brought to the final three immortalities which have impressed me as being the best worked out and most desirable. There is, first, Professor Jameson and the Zoromes, whose organic brains are given functional metal bodies considerably more handy and durable than the organic structures of the body can be. Interesting and acceptable as this notion is, however, it is not quite as attractive as the immortality depicted in two of Manning's stories--"The Elixir" and "The Living Galaxy." The biological basis of this immortality is a good deal sounder than the average "serum" "draught" or whatnot. Manning simply proposes to cross-breed each of the "270 different cell-types" in the body, on the principle that new blood will instill virility into aged stock. The beauty of this is that the brain cells in a human brain do not multiply in number as the other cells do, and therefore the rejuvenation process will not affect the memory patterns. It would be very interesting to try out Manning's notion in practice, but naturally modern biological science is thousands of years away from being able to do anything of the sort. If the future of the race is to be measured in millions of years, however, the problem may well be eventually solved. We come now to the final and "highest" type of immortality--eternal life as pure intellectual force. Eando Binder's "Spawn of Eternal Thought" suffered from the slight defect of requiring material energy to keep him going--he needed matter as fuel, and was of quasi-material nature, whereby his destruction was forged. At that, he does not appear to have been any too bright upstairs. A much better example, in fact, the "classic" example of be-
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THE FANTASITE 12 still desiring sleep would be inefficient. Returning to Stribling's tale, we have here the suggestion that when a dead body is waked to life, it lacks a soul and behaves in strictly an animal fashion. This is not a very convincing doctrine, since many apparently dead persons have been resuscitated and seemed none the worse for it. An "elixir" story which deserves separate mention is Keller's "Life Everlasting." Despite the fact that the serum in question cures all diseases and brings about perfect physical and mental health, it has the defect of inducing sterility, and Keller offers it as his opinion that after a few years of childlessness the women would find their lives intolerable because incomplete. in a sense, Keller is certainly right, for there is obviously no biological future for a race which has ceased to produce children, irrespective of the life tenure of the adults. The idea of transferring the personality to another body, or, alternatively, of using some unfortunate donor's fresh young blood to make an aged body young, has also seen considerable service. The latter method is excellently described in Miller's "The Master Shall Not Die," in which the survivor is described as a beneficient co:ordinator of scientific work. The outright transferral theme is found in Hamilton's "Intelligence Undying". Where the would-be immortal transfers his brain-pattern to the plastic brain of a new born infant, killing his old body, but leaving the child to grow up with all the memories of a past adult life. This is an interesting idea, and although it involves a certain amount of wasted time and dependence on others while the child is growing up, it seems more logical than Lovecraft's mind-exchange system used by the "Great Race" in "The Shadow out of Time." This system is perhaps unique among the immortality methods we have been considering, in that the mind seeing a new body could go forward into the future or back into the past, and force the exchange with the mind of any intelligent creature. Thus, the minds of those of the Great Race who desired immortality were virtually secure against destruction. Certain forms of quasi-immortality have occasionally been mentioned which sound far from attractive--Manning & Pratt's "City of the Living Dead", where the dependency on outside control to change the sleep adventures is a great drawback, and Sharp's "Eternal Man", frozen into immobility, but not dead or even unconscious. Thus, by elimination, we have been brought to the final three immortalities which have impressed me as being the best worked out and most desirable. There is, first, Professor Jameson and the Zoromes, whose organic brains are given functional metal bodies considerably more handy and durable than the organic structures of the body can be. Interesting and acceptable as this notion is, however, it is not quite as attractive as the immortality depicted in two of Manning's stories--"The Elixir" and "The Living Galaxy." The biological basis of this immortality is a good deal sounder than the average "serum" "draught" or whatnot. Manning simply proposes to cross-breed each of the "270 different cell-types" in the body, on the principle that new blood will instill virility into aged stock. The beauty of this is that the brain cells in a human brain do not multiply in number as the other cells do, and therefore the rejuvenation process will not affect the memory patterns. It would be very interesting to try out Manning's notion in practice, but naturally modern biological science is thousands of years away from being able to do anything of the sort. If the future of the race is to be measured in millions of years, however, the problem may well be eventually solved. We come now to the final and "highest" type of immortality--eternal life as pure intellectual force. Eando Binder's "Spawn of Eternal Thought" suffered from the slight defect of requiring material energy to keep him going--he needed matter as fuel, and was of quasi-material nature, whereby his destruction was forged. At that, he does not appear to have been any too bright upstairs. A much better example, in fact, the "classic" example of be-
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