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by Hugh Cook |
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Section 117 Entry 0001. Date: 2004 July 14 Wednesday.
(diary) (previous) (top) (bottom) (next) (topics) (contents) An account of writing a story. A science fiction story. Or, rather, of not writing a science fiction story. I'm too busy to write this particular story. Or, to put it another way, unless I focus in on a couple of key projects, I'm never going to get anything worthwhile finished. Anyway, the basic idea was a very simple sciencefictional idea. I was thinking about medicine, and about how there is often a tradeoff between treatment and side effects. If you don't take drug X you will die of progressive dematerialization, for example. But if you do take drug X then maybe it will cause cancer. And perhaps you're not suffering from progressive dematerialization. We're not sure. Our science is not that advanced. And from this thought there came an idea:- Suppose someone had to make a tradeoff. They could lock in a guaranteed lifespan, but with the certainty of death at a set age, say age sixty-five. If they didn't lock in the lifespan, they might die sooner or they might live longer. This idea seemed promising, but I had two problems with it. First, I couldn't think of a science fictional mechanism for locking in your lifespan. Scientifically, how would that work? Second, I had the uneasy feeling that this idea, or some variation on it (probably many variations on it) had already been used, although I couldn't think of an example. Anyway. I didn't even bother to make a note of the idea. Rather, I just let it subside back gently into the slushpile of my mind. Then I started thinking about a conversation I had a couple of days ago with my wife, about whether we should get our baby daughter vaccinated. The local ward office here in Japan is recommending a list of vaccinations to be taken between the ages of three months and twelve months, and it's not a simple decision to make. Vaccination against polio, for example: is that a good idea or not? Granted that vaccines are pretty safe, is there any such thing as a totally safe vaccine? Looking ahead into the future, is polio going to become extinct? Or is the current resurgence of the disease in Nigeria going to get out of hand? And, when you're living in an international place like the Tokyo-Yokohama area, exactly how far away is Nigeria, in medical terms? And I was thinking about this and I felt a logical little "click" in my mind. Go back to the business of choosing a set lifespan for yourself. That's a little bit interesting, but it becomes a lot more interesting if you have to choose a set lifespan for your child, who is too young to have a say in the matter. Let's say, for plot purposes, that the lifespan setting has to be done when the child is young. Anyway, I let that thought settle back into my mind. I was still at least half-persuaded that this idea, or something like it, had been done. And this morning, when I woke up, I knew where at least one variant of the "limited lifespan" idea had been used. It goes way back to the novel "Brave New World" by Aldous Huxley, which, if an Internet link I've just clicked on can be trusted, was written in 1932. If I remember correctly (I haven't read the book for decades) in the novel the citizens of Huxley's utopia are pepped up by some kind of idealizing process which means that their bodies run happily in perfect health until a certain age, at which point the person rather swiftly dies. The details don't matter. The point is that the idea is not really a new one. And, if the "efficient now, dead later" idea made it into print as early as "Brave New World," then there probably any number of variants of it have been produced since, even if I'm not aware of them. However, this thought did occur to me: the ideal age for a skill to come to full maturity varies with the skill. (This is not, of course, my original thought. It's something I read somewhere.) Composers often mature early. Novelists tend to reach their peak in middle age. Historians are often heading into old age by the time they do their best work. So let's take this premise:- A husband and wife have to choose a future for their son. Will their son live a (potentially) long life, at the risk of dying young? Or will they lock in a slightly shorter lifespan (sixty-eight, for example) with a firm guarantee that their son will actually reach that age? (Again, I'm bedevilled by the fact that I can't think of a mechanism for locking in the lifespan, or why someone would be at particular risk of dying younger if they didn't lock in their lifespan.) And the father points to his own father - let's call him old man Splinth - who is so brightly full of the details of the past, which he remembers as if it was yesterday. And the father, who has ambitions for his own son to become a historian, talks of the great work that old man Splinth is doing in his old age, and how this great work will one day make the old man famous. And what the wife realizes is that her husband is refusing to face the reality, which is that his father is senile, his recall of the past the one bright spot in an otherwise faltering mental world, and that the nursing home in which old man Splinth currently resides specializes in people who are suffering from Alzheimer's. Now that, I think, is a writable story, despite the fact that I can't imagine a technical mechanism for locking in someone's lifespan. But I'm not going to write it. I've got to lock in my own choices, and, now, I'm at a stage where it's a question of "If you do X, you're never going to be able to finish Y, and Y is more important." |
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