SUSPENDED ANIMATION

   The notion of suspended animation is one of the oldest literary devices in sf, by virtue of its convenience as a means of TIME TRAVEL into the future (see also SLEEPER AWAKES). It is used in UTOPIAN romances like L.S. MERCIER's Memoirs of the Year Two Thousand Five Hundred (trans 1772), MaryGRIFFITH's Three Hundred Years Hence (1836; 1975) and Edward BELLAMY's Looking Backward, 2000-1887 (1888). It became somewhat more than a literary convenience in H.G. WELLS's When the Sleeper Wakes (1899; rev vt The Sleeper Awakes 1910). These stories, having other purposes in view,gloss over the scientific means by which suspended animation might be achieved. Edgar Allan POE's short story "The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar" (1845) features mesmerically induced suspended animation, whileGrant ALLEN's "Pausodyne" (1881) imagines an 18th-century scientist inventing a gas which puts him into protracted anaesthesia. The most popular means, however, has always been preservation by freezing (CRYONICS). Many fantasies using the theme were inspired by the ancientEgyptian habit of mummifying the dead; it was a relatively small imaginative step to suppose an arcane mummification process which preserved life and beauty, and Egyptian princesses ripe for revival are featured in Edgar Lee's Pharaoh's Daughter (1889), Clive Holland's An Egyptian Coquette (1898; rev vt The Spell of Isis) and Robert W.CHAMBERS's The Tracer of Lost Persons (1906); a very much more recent example is Anne Rice's The Mummy, or Ramses the Damned (1989). The modern world is visited by observers preserved from even more remote eras in Erle COX's Out of the Silence (1919; 1925; exp 1947), Olof W. ANDERSON's TheTreasure-Vault of Atlantis (1925) and Edgar Rice BURROUGHS's "The Resurrection of Jimber Jaw" (1937). A curious novel which explores the existential significance of the ability to suspend animation in oneself is The Insurgents (1957) by VERCORS; and Robert A. HEINLEIN intricatelyconstructs The Door into Summer (1957) around 2 trips to a single future by suspended animation.Suspended animation was co-opted into GENRE SF as one of the standard items in its vocabulary of ideas; it was used in the first extensive pulp exploration of future HISTORY, Laurence MANNING's The Man who Awoke (1933; fixup 1975). Genre-sf writers found it a usefuldevice in another context: avoiding the intolerable timelags involved in journeys to the stars. An early trip of this kind is featured in A.E. VAN VOGT's "Far Centaurus" (1944), whose luckless heroes arrive to find thatFASTER-THAN-LIGHT travel has been invented as they slept. More recent dramas involving ships populated largely by people in suspended animation include The Black Corridor (1969) by Michael MOORCOCK and Hilary BAILEY and The Dream Millennium (1974) by James WHITE. Stranger beings than Cox's or Olof W. Anderson's Atlanteans could be found in suspended animation, in a manner reminiscent of supernatural stories in which ancient GODS and their dormant MAGIC are revived into the present by folly or evil intent. The later work of H.P. LOVECRAFT is notable in this respect, while moreorthodox sf variations on the theme include The Alien (1951) by Raymond F. JONES, World of Ptavvs (1966) by Larry NIVEN and The Space Vampires (1976)by Colin WILSON.The recent popularization of cryonics as a means of suspending animation has offered a boost to the credibility of the jargon surrounding the literary device, and has helped increase interest in alternative methods. These include the various works ultimately gathered into The Worthing Saga (1978-89; fixup 1990) by Orson Scott CARD and the fascinating Between the Strokes of Night (1985) by Charles SHEFFIELD, which takes the notion to its logical extreme. Its deployment as a timeslipping device is nowadays less frequent, but the motif is still capable of further sophistication, as shown in Richard Ben SAPIR's visitor-from-the-past story The Far Arena (1978) and Richard LUPOFF's FAR-FUTURE story Sun's End (1984).

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   See also: IMMORTALITY; GENERATION STARSHIPS; MEDICINE.