Det finns en historia som jag lyssnade på för en tid sedan. Jag vet att det var berättat av Harlan Ellison, men jag vet inte för ett faktum det var skrivet av honom. Det var en samling av tre mycket korta historier med fokus på odödlighet.
För det första kan du leva för alltid så länge du har tillräckligt med pengar. Så småningom flyter planeten till strider, med hela planeten omdirigerad "Death Valley".
För det andra kan människor sälja sina svårförtjänta färdigheter för ungdomar, sedan spendera mer tid på att få mer kompetens och så vidare. I slutet bestämmer alla sig för att återvända till spädbarn, tas om hand av maskiner.
För det tredje kan du leva för evigt så länge du hittar minst en person att älska dig. Historien följer ansträngningarna från en djupt olovlig man som försöker att uppnå just det.
Ah hah! Jag tänkte ut det.
Det är " Fyra korta romaner " (ISFDB ) av Joe Haldeman. Ellison berättade ljudversionen.
Eventually it came to pass that no one ever had to die, unless they ran out of money. When you started to feel the little aches and twinges that meant your body was running down, you just got in line at Immortality, Incorporated, and handed them your credit card. As long as you had at least a million bucks—and eventually everybody did—they would reset you to whatever age you liked.
One way people made money was by swapping knowledge around. Skills could be transferred with a technology spun off from the immortality process. You could spend a few decades becoming a great concert pianist, and then put your ability up for sale. There was no shortage of people with two million dollars who would trade one million to be their village’s Van Cliburn. In the sale of your ability, you would lose it, but you could buy it back a few decades or centuries later.
....
In a world where there were no children—where would you put them?—he was the only infant. He was the only person with no useful skills and, eventually, the only one alive who did not have nearly a thousand years of memory.
....
It was inevitable that someone would see a profit in this. A consortium with a name we would translate as Blank Slate offered to “dicuth” anyone who had a certain large sum of what passed for money, and maintain them for as long as they wanted. At first people were slightly outraged, because it was a kind of sacrilege, or were slightly amused, because it was such a transparent scheme to gather what passed for wealth.
Eventually it came to pass that no one ever had to die, unless they wanted to, or could be talked into it. That made it very hard to fight wars, and a larger and larger part of every nation’s military budget was given over to psychological operations directed toward their own people: Dulce et decorum est just wasn’t convincing enough anymore.
....
Wars were all fought in Death Valley, with primitive hand weapons, and the United States grew wealthy renting the place out, until it inevitably found itself fighting a series of wars for Death Valley, during one of which O’Malley himself finally died, charging a phalanx of no-longer-immortal pikemen on his robotic horse, waving a broken sword. His final words were, famously, “Oh, shit.”
....
There was a worldwide referendum, utilizing something indistinguishable from telepathy, where everybody agreed to change the name of the planet to Death Valley, and on the eve of the new century, A.D. 3000, have at each other.
Eventually it came to pass that no one ever had to die, so long as just one person loved them. The process that provided immortality was fueled that way.
Den fjärde berättelsen var "Crime and Punishment", som handlade om brottslingar och möjligheten att generera säkerhetskloner som heter "Farlies".
Eventually it came to pass that no one ever had to die, unless they were so horrible that society had to dispose of them. Other than the occasional horrible person, the world was in an idyllic state, everyone living as long as they wanted to, doing what they wanted to do.
This is how things got back to normal.
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