Teresa Mangum

Longing for Life Extension: Science Fiction and Late Life

Rejuvenescence has long been a topic of legend and “medicine.” As the body became the property of medical science, speculative fiction asked how fantastic experiments with bodies would affect the life course. In science fiction, medical breakthroughs promise or threaten to forestall or even reverse the decline from midlife through old age to senility and decrepitude. Responding to debates over evolution, eugenics, and scientific experimentation with human and animal subjects, rejuvenescence novels such as Bruce Sterlings Holy Fire (1996) ask readers whether they desire long life or heightened quality of life; the consolations of age or the hungers of youth; short-lived intensity or perpetual ennui.