Path: ...!news.mixmin.net!eternal-september.org!feeder3.eternal-september.org!news.eternal-september.org!.POSTED!not-for-mail From: Lynn McGuire Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.written Subject: Re: (ReacTor) Over the Hill: Five Not-So-Youthful SFF Protagonists Date: Thu, 18 Jul 2024 17:28:09 -0500 Organization: A noiseless patient Spider Lines: 32 Message-ID: References: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Injection-Date: Fri, 19 Jul 2024 00:28:10 +0200 (CEST) Injection-Info: dont-email.me; posting-host="059d977631d4d2ca54a84b17655a3d54"; logging-data="2761668"; mail-complaints-to="abuse@eternal-september.org"; posting-account="U2FsdGVkX1/gvXOFuQlylwBB2V/ne1NOunAjRvHh0iI=" User-Agent: Mozilla Thunderbird Cancel-Lock: sha1:9HkO3WBraAHW9PfQLW5YyXSYNr8= In-Reply-To: Content-Language: en-US Bytes: 2444 On 7/18/2024 5:13 PM, Garrett Wollman wrote: > In article , > William Hyde wrote: > >> Leaving out immortals or quasi/immortals: > > In Julian May's Galactic Milieu, regeneration treatment seems to be > both reliable and commonplace, so humans only die of old age because > they've chosen not to undertake the treatment. (Still plenty of other > causes of death, like physical trauma.) > > In Saunders' Commonweal there are evidently a number of species that > do not senesce, which is distinguished from immortality in some > unexplained technical sense. Other species have significantly > different-from-human-norm lifespans that have the same statistical > structure as ordinary-model humans but with different expected length. > > It is notable that so many sff civilizations seem to be stuck in the > mode of "people live for 75 +/- 10 Earth years". I suppose it's easy > enough to carry that assumption into your worldbuilding if that's not > something you expicitly set out to reconsider. > > -GAWollman Robert Heinlein has life extension to several centuries using body rejuvenation clinics in "Time Enough For Love". David Weber has significantly enhanced human beings living to 600 years in "Mutineer's Moon". Lynn