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David_Gerard comments on Cryoburn - Imperial Auditor Vorkosigan investigates the cryonics industry - Less Wrong
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And my review. I wasn't vastly impressed with it compared to the rest of the series. But it is space-opera fluff, after all.
It's more a set of postulates: (a) cryonics works reliably (b) age hasn't been cured. That is, all controversy about cryonics stems from it working. Then work out the consequences and use the Vorkosigan characters to do so.
Note that what she's calling "cryonics" seems to bear no resemblance whatsoever to the thing that is done now called "cryonics." (Except perfusion on preservation.)
Being through Baen, who have discovered that giving away the text increases sales, there's a CD of the whole series included with the Cryoburn hardback, and you can read the whole thing online.
Yeah... We might term this "soft cryonics" where the damage-prevention process is a solved issue and revivification is thus relatively trivial. Common in sci-fi, and most people's idea of the future has room for it.
In current-day "hard" cryonics, the damage can't be prevented so much, but there's the additional postulate that, at some point, lots of damage can be repaired. Any method of doing so would most likely make curing aging look easy by comparison -- but it still isn't ruled out by any known theoretical consideration. The treatment of patients with a "bad prep" as being irreversibly dead in the book was disappointing to me. (But then given the context of the series as a whole it wasn't particularly out of place.)
Abg cerccvat Neny ng gur raq jnf n qvfnccbvagzrag tvira gung vg jnf Pbeqryyvn'f qrpvfvba (jub jnf irel ceb-yvsr ng gur ortvaavat bs gur frevrf), ohg vg qvq fhvg uvf punenpgre gb abg jnag gb or cerfreirq.
Vg jnf nyfb fgenatr gb frr Zvyrf pbafgnagyl ersreevat gb nyy gur cngvragf nf "gur sebmra qrnq" naq abobql pnyyvat uvz ba vg. Ur'f na rk-pelbcngvrag uvzfrys, sbe pelvat bhg ybhq. Ur rira frrzf gb guvax n jbzna jub jnf bevtvanyyl cerfreirq va cresrpg pbaqvgvba (ab pyvavpny qrngu jungfbrire) unf orra oebhtug onpx sebz gur qrnq.
And Word of God confirms that "work out the consequences and use the Vorkosigan characters to do so" is precisely what the book is.