J. W. Campbell's 1949 Editorial on Life Extension
When I was an impressionable 14-year-old I recall reading a very impressive editorial in the April-1949 issue of Astounding Science Fiction, the then-flagship magazine of the Golden Age of Science Fiction. The editorial was written by the famous SF editor, John W. Campbell, Jr. In it, Campbell speculated on the possibility that medical science might find the cause of human aging and its cure soon enough that a child already born (perhaps even himself) could live indefinitely. Campbell suggested that some near-future medical discovery might extend the life of the recipient long enough to reach the next discovery and the next life extension, and so on, culminating in a life span that was numbered in centuries rather than decades.
Campbell's 70-year old editorial is very relevant to our current discussion of life extension. I have managed to find and OCR it from the online archives of the old Astoundings, and it is available HERE. (Campbell, a heavy smoker, actually died in 1971 of heart failure, just a month after celebrating his 61st birthday.)
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Great article. And I see him discussing the idea later rediscovered and called "Longevity Escape Velocity". I think Aubrey said it first with Kurzweil and such repeating - if anybody knows Aubrey send him the PDF as this might be the first mention in literature of the concept, back in 1971.
I was likewise influence by Robert Heinlein and Fred Pohl. Some notables - Pohl's "The World at the End of Time" where the main character, Viktor Sorricaine, keeps using a form of cryonics to travel to the far future. Heinlein explored the idea in Methuselah's Children, which originally was serialized in Astounding Science Fiction 1941. In the book a rich man dies young and leaves his money to prolong human life. The trustees do this by encouraging people who have long lived grandparents to marry. Eventually the extended decedents of 'The Howards' life to 150 years old. This series spawned "Lazarus Long", a man who didn't die and was Heinlein favorite character (I think modeled after himself).
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Another J. W. Campbell Editorial on Aging and Bio-Life
I notice from the same Astounding archive that John W. Campbell, Jr. also wrote another editorial, this one in the September-1948 Astounding SF, that is relevant to our anti-aging discussions. The link is HERE.
In it, Campbell asserts that land animals are subject to senescence and old age, while fish are not. He suggests that Nature invented aging as a part of the adaptation to dwelling on land. As I recall, Aldous Huxley used a similar idea in After Many a Summer Dies the Swan.
Is this correct biology? I'm aware that fish that survive being eaten by other fish do tend to grow larger as they grow older. However, I'm not aware that their cells don't go senescent or that they are immune to aging. Any experts out there who have expertise in the cell biology of aging fish?
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JGC Yeah AFAIK (note physics degrees, not biology!) that's not correct. Certainly not as such as broad generalization, aging is one thing that varies tremendously across species who are otherwise genetically related. Consider chimps who differ from us genetically by a few % or something (maybe it's even 1% I forget.) They have much shorter spans, and importantly they can't fast. A chimp will die after a few days without food. So far much of our anti-aging work is in fasting mimetics (something Aubrey is skeptical of). So we're attacking aging in a way that wouldn't work at all for chimps probably.
I recall there are some species that essentially don't age but I forget what they are, sharks or something.
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