Consequences of Extended Human Lifespans

What are some stories that deal with cultural, psychological, and/or ecological consequences of drastically extended human lifespans, either in scarcity or post-scarcity societies?

How are human motivations affected when you can expect to live centuries or millennia instead of a handful of decades?

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Poul Anderson’s The Boat of a Million Years looks at this in depth, and has immortality as its central focus.

It’s a bit obvious in that

the initial immortals are at the end, the only humans who retain the human drive for exploration.

L.E. Modesitt, Jr.'s “Forever Hero” Trilogy has as its protagonist a biological immortal who uses his immortality to create a commercial empire which has as its purpose the development of biological technologies and processes to reclaim earth (devastated by nuclear war and biological and chemical warfare), as well as to create a sustainable lifestyle (plants are created which will grow into houses, or which will bear fruit which tastes like steak, &c.).

The Tor Double containing Roger Zelazny’s “The Graveyard Heart” and Walter Jon Williams’ “Elegy For Angels And Dogs” looks at a world in which an elite dramatically extend their lifespans using cryogenic stasis and discover that the world has changed around them. Not quite as on the nose as The Twilight Zone’s “The Rip Van Winkle Caper”, but an interesting examination of it.

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Cory Doctorow’s Walkaway deals with (among other things) a conflict between two groups: the establishment, who would allow eternal life to be the exclusive benefit of a wealthy few, creating a permanent class of immortal god-kings, vs. a group of rebels / counter-culture types who seek to ensure that access to immortality is available to the broad population.

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“To Live Forever”, an early novel by Jack Vance, presents a stratified society where life extensions are granted on the basis of social merit. The pyramid gets narrower, and more slippery, the older one gets, with only about a thousand true immortals.

Joe Haldeman’s “The Long Habit of Living” (previously published as “Buying Time”) takes a similarly mercantile approach to the issue. The process of rejuvenating the body is incredibly expensive, and requires each recipient to perform acts of extraordinary entrepreneurship to obtain sufficient funds to pay for the next treatment before it is due.

By contrast, “Altered Carbon” (a Netflix show based on novels by Richard K Morgan) has most people able to transfer their consciousness between bodies via ‘stacks’, making everyone virtually immune to death by accident (although plenty of the Yakuza-like underworld are well aware that the stacks themselves are vulnerable). For some, it makes for a more laissez-faire attitude to personal safety. Viewing it, one gets the impression this grubby attitude filters through to society in general. One problem that can be encountered is that the QA of available bodies (‘sleeves’) may not be the best…

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Alan Nourse’s Martyr (part of Psi High and Others) has immortality have a stultifying effect on people, leading to perfectionism that verges on complete inertia. I’ll be glad to live a few hundred years to see if that happens.

Niven’s Cautionary Tales notes that even the longest-lived might end up wasting time searching for a way to live even longer - rather than to enjoy what life they have

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Clarke’s “City and the Stars” contemplates Diaspar: a society of immortals closed off from the Universe of now, and how such a society might stave off stagnation over millions of years.
One method is for everyone to return their burden of memories to the City’s data banks after a millennium or so of experience. They are reborn as blank slates, with their optimised memories returned to them after about twenty years of fresh ‘childhood’. How these newly annointed ‘adults’ handle this influx is not covered.
Another method is the occasional injection of ‘jesters’: people with a non-conformist outlook who bring some ‘good chaos’ to everyday life, with some encouragement from the City.
Finally, there is the ‘unique’: a true disruptor of people who have never been born before. This brings an original mind into the mix, and the results are highly unpredictable (in the case of Alvin, it leads to Diaspar’s bubble of isolation being punctured).

Whether any of these methods would actually work over the timescales envisaged is debatable. Nevertheless, this novel is a timeless SF classic, describing technologies which still seem futuristic, even seventy years after publication.

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I haven’t read The City and the Stars in so long that I forgot about that one. As I recall, it was basically a complete rewrite of Clarke’s earlier novel, Against the Fall of Night.
Thanks for reminding me! Time to revisit an old favorite.

Comparing Clarke’s rewrite with the original suggests he had sourced a better grade of psilocybin!
‘City’ was his preferred version (and mine), although a lot of people still opted for ‘Night’. Greg Benford wrote a sequel, and I believe Murray Leinster was going to, although nothing came of it.

Herbert’s The Heisenberg Effect. Humans have 2 classes. Poor die fairly quick (50’s or so). They’re kept uneducated, worker bees, poor diet, housing, meds, etc. Elite live so long they are unable to remember and don’t even recall how this happened to them. They’re also bored and quite boring.

Also, in Herbert’s list is God Emperor of Dune. Leto II is just over 10k years at the opening of the novel, and he’s the only one.

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