In general, science fiction deals with the issue of aging
one of two ways: it somehow involves Humanity finding a way to “live forever”
or it ignores old age and goes right for swashbuckling youth.
There are notable exceptions.
John Scalzi, a young whippersnapper himself at a current age
of a mere 44, devotes his Old Man’s Universe to the idea that older adults
would be glad to leave Earth behind and serve in the Colonial Defense Force as
shock troops for a slow expansion of Humanity into a hostile universe. He also
deals with the transhumanist immortality in his novel THE ANDROID’S DREAM.
It’s not, however that our search for avoiding the ravages
of old age is a 21st Century thing (as we seem to think just about
every concept in science is…something “new” that the real scientists of this
century are the first Humans to ever think about or try or
discover…ahem…stepping down off soapbox.) “The Epic of Gilgamesh (the oldest
heroic epic known to the modern world) is, in large part, about the titular character's
search for a way to live forever.” Actor, writer, and generally eccentric
personality Woody Allen summarizes it nicely, “‘I don't want to achieve
immortality through my work. I want to achieve it through not dying.’”
But as far as I can tell, science fiction has spent more
words discussing the inevitability of defeating death or aging than it has
learning to deal with aging gracefully. In her book, “Aging Gracefully with
Dignity, Integrity and Spunk Intact: Aging Defiantly”, Norma Roth says, “Your longer
lifespan heralds the continued storage, absorption and retrieval of an enormous
database more like the Renaissance model that is still much admired. Think
Michelangelo, Rembrandt, and Newton and the magic of that time we so admire,
when people seemed to absorb so much knowledge and be successful in so many
fields over a lifespan. With lifetimes being extended, the Silver Generation
may have the time over the anticipated extra span of life to duplicate that
magnificent period of learning and creating. Only few people have done so since
that remarkable time. Ben Franklin, scientist, inventor, statesman, scholar
seemed one of our rare examples of a Renaissance man. There are others of
course, but I think you will agree, it is not a commonplace phenomenon. Given
the gifts that are on the horizon, the possibilities of the Silver Generation
seem endless.” (http://books.google.com/books?id=Xr7B8niz7dsC&pg=PA156&lpg=PA156&dq=science+fiction,+aging+gracefully&source=
bl&ots=MeJxxITkgm&sig=Ru68_Przmb6e-qRY3zVHeB_oG8k&hl=en&sa=X&ei=sUZBU-XpILLMsATV34DoDw&ved=0CCcQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=science%20fiction%2C%20aging%20gracefully&f=false)
If I may be so bold, the thought I’m most ashamed of is when
I hear my age peers speaking of retirement in terms of travel, rest, and
recreation. With the continued drought in short story sales and the fact that
my YA novel has been with my agent for nearly two years with no nibbles of
hope, I’ve begun to spout the same party line.
While it seems unrelated to the rant above, it gives a frame
into which I painted my thought picture. The original root of my Possibly
Irritating Essay series for the past several months was in the Diversicon 2013
speculative fiction convention I attended and my intent was to bug people with
my speculations, writing this essay has kicked me in the teeth.
Entranced by STAR TREK’s suspended animation survivor, Khan
Noonien Singh and the REALITY that life-extension is currently
indistinguishable from wishing for a magic spell, I have ignored my own aging
and like Woody Allen, I preferred my immortality magic as opposed to literary.
I ignored an entire branch of the Human experience because
most everyone else did.
I’ve ignored the POSSIBILITY that aging might create new
opportunities rather than signifying the “shutting down” of my life and a
retreat from knowledge. After all, with the hue and cry that “…we see an
information overload from the access to so much information, almost
instantaneously, without knowing the validity of the content and the risk of
misinformation.” So warned, I gave in to the fear that because we can’t learn
everything, why learn anything now that I'm getting old and will just forget it
all?
“Even Leonardo warned against being spread thin. The other
day Robinson came across one of his late notebooks, in which he had written,
‘Like a kingdom divided, which rushes to its doom, the mind that engages in
subjects of too great variety becomes confused and weakened’…A new orthodoxy,
popularized by Malcolm Gladwell, sees obsessive focus as the key that unlocks
genius…[but] innovations come from a fresh eye or from another
discipline…breakthroughs—the sort of idea that opens up whole sets of new
problems—often come from other fields.” (The meme I hear most often is that
Humans didn’t know much “back then”, so there wasn’t much to learn and one
person could be a Renaissance Man because they could learn everything there was
to know about a subject…REALLY? REALLY? The worst part is that I’ve already
charged the attainment of this knowledge to my account, so apparently there’s
no going back.)
However, I can remedy that situation. I am going to start
exploring the fictional possibilities inherent in an extended lifetime leading
to, not “retirement” but becoming a Renaissance Person, a polymath, an intellectual
polygamist.
Anyone want to join me?
Resources: http://io9.com/5618012/when-someone-dies-of-old-age-on-scifi-tv-its-never-natural-causes/all,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cocoon_(film),
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_Man's_War,
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/LiquidAssets,
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/Immortality,
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/BrainUploading,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information_overload,
http://moreintelligentlife.com/content/edward-carr/last-days-polymath
s1600/retiredSmack.gif
No comments:
Post a Comment