Cryonics - Cryonics in Popular Culture

Cryonics in Popular Culture

Procedures similar to cryonics have been featured in innumerable science fiction stories as a means to transport a character from the past into the future, or sometimes to aid space travel (in particular interstellar travel). In addition to accomplishing whatever the character's primary task is in the future, he or she must cope with the strangeness of a new world, which may contain only traces of their previous surroundings. This prospect of alienation is often cited as a major reason for the unpopularity of cryonics.

Notable early science fiction short stories featuring human cryopreservation, deliberate or accidental, include Lydia Maria Child's short story "Hilda Silfverling, A Fantasy" (1886), Jack London's first published work "A Thousand Deaths" (1899), V. Mayakovsky's "Klop" (1928), H.P. Lovecraft's "Cool Air" (1928), and Edgar Rice Burroughs' "The Resurrection of Jimber-Jaw" (1937). Many of the subjects in these stories are unwilling ones, although a 1931 short story by Neil R. Jones called "The Jameson Satellite", in which the subject has himself deliberately preserved in space after death, has been credited with giving Robert Ettinger the seed of the idea of cryonics, when he was a teenager. Ettinger would later write a science fiction story called The Penultimate Trump, published in 1948, in which the explicit idea of cryopreservation of legally dead persons for future repair of medical causes of death is promulgated.

Relatively few stories have been published concerning the primary objective and definition of cryonics, which is medical time travel. The most indepth novel based on contemporary cryonics is national best-seller The First Immortal by James L. Halperin (1998). Other novels include The Door into Summer by Robert A. Heinlein (1954), The Age of the Pussyfoot by Fred Pohl (1966) and Ubik by Philip K. Dick (1968), Tomorrow and Tomorrow by Charles Sheffield (1997), Chiller by Sterling Blake (a.k.a. Gregory Benford) (1993), Tech-Heaven by Linda Nagata (1995), Ralph’s Journey by David Pizer, Formerly Brandewyne by Jude Liebermann, and I Was a Teenage Popsicle by Bev Katz Rosenbaum. A fictional book about cryonics specifically for children is 21st Century Kids by Shannon Vyff.

Fictional application of cryonics as rescue after freezing in space has continued since The Jameson Satellite in 1931. Arthur C. Clarke's 3001: The Final Odyssey reveals that Frank Poole, murdered by HAL 9000 in 2001: A Space Odyssey was cryopreserved by his exposure to space, and found and revived a thousand years later. The Larry Niven short story "Wait It Out" depicts a sort of emergency self-cryopreservation by men marooned on Pluto. The 1992 Hugo-winning novel A Fire Upon the Deep by Vernor Vinge features a protagonist who is resuscitated by a superintelligence, thousands of years after a spaceship accident. Stanisław Lem described cryonic hibernation during space travel in his novel The Invincible, and used cryonic preservation (using device named in a way to suggest vitrification) as a major plot element in his novel Fiasco. Cryonics has also been used in Eoin Colfer's Artemis Fowl: The Eternity Code (referred as "cryogenics" in the book); Domovoi Butler was frozen by Artemis Fowl after being shot and then revived by Captain Holly Short. In the 1999 video game Homeworld, released by Relic Entertainment, the native residents of the planet Kharak use cryogenic preservation to preserve and store hundred of thousands of people in 'cryo trays' for transport aboard the Mothership, a large colony ship to take them to their ancestral homeworld, Hiigara. In the 2001 videogame Halo: Combat Evolved, Master Chief is woken from cryo as the Covenant attacks his ship. Also, Halo 3's legendary ending shows Chief and Cortana trapped in a ship as the Chief goes into cryo after telling Cortana to "Wake me when you need me." In most recent Halo, Halo 4 Chief awakens after being in cryo for 4 years.

Movies featuring cryonics for medical purposes include the Woody Allen comedy, Sleeper (1973), and the films Late for Dinner (1991), Open Your Eyes (Abre los Ojos 1997, remade as Vanilla Sky, 2001) and Wes Craven's Chiller (1985). Another movies featuring a cryonics-like process was Forever Young (1992), starring Mel Gibson. A "CryoPrison" is where inmates are kept away from society and mentally reformed during their preservation in the film Demolition Man (1993), while cryopreservation is used during space travel in the James Cameron films Aliens (1986) and Avatar (2009). Pandorum (also 2009) features a form of cryopreservation which, upon waking from, subjects are left disoriented, with amnesia lasting anywhere from days to months, and, in rare instances, suffering from "Pandorum" a type of psychosis. Star Wars Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back (1980) involves the test freezing of Han Solo as proof of concept for suspension, which caused temporary blindness upon his successful revival. Although not about cryonics per se, the Ron Howard film Cocoon (1985) has been hailed by cryonics advocates as expressing the values motivating cryonics better than any other film.

On television, cryonics has appeared occasionally since the late 1960s. The first story arc of Canadian Soap Opera "Strange Paradise" in 1969 featured a reclusive millionaire "Jean Paul Desmond" who had his wife "Erica" cryonically preserved after her death, episodes featured fictional members of the "Cryonics Society". An episode of The Saint called 'The Man Who Gambled With Life' was made in mid-1968 and focused on a dying multi-millionaire who has himself cryonically preserved. Episode 2 of "The Starlost" called 'Lazarus From the Mist' featured a character who is revived from cryonic suspension in an effort to save the spaceship Ark. In 1977, an episode of Barney Miller included a member of the "Metropolitan New York Cryonic Society". Producer David E. Kelley wrote well-researched portrayals of cryonics for the TV shows L.A. Law (1990), Picket Fences (1994), and Boston Legal (2005); in each case, there was a dying plaintiff petitioning a court for the right to elective cryopreservation. A similar storyline was featured on Drop Dead Diva (2010). Cryonics was also featured on Miami Vice (1987), SeaQuest DSV (1994), and the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode "The Neutral Zone" (1988). It played a side role in an episode of mystery drama Castle, where a prominent doctor is murdered and the investigation hampered by a contract he had drawn up to have his body cryogencially preserved for future revival. In the pilot episode of Misfits of Science (1985), Arnold "Beef" "Ice Man" Beifneiter was a cryopreserved subject from 1937 who, upon waking, is left simple-minded and with the power to freeze anything he touches, though vulnerable to warmer temperatures and kept cold in an ice cream truck. An episode of The Golden Girls includes all four eponymous women cryogenically preserved, but Dorothy, Blanche, and Rose saving only their heads. Sophia, whose body remains intact, informs them they needed "to tip the guy" to be fully preserved. On British TV, cryonics appeared in the last two television works of Dennis Potter, Karaoke and Cold Lazarus (both 1996), and the long-running series Doctor Who, as well as its spin-off Torchwood. Cryonics was also satirized by the American comedy cartoon series Futurama, with the main character Philip J. Fry accidentally being frozen for 1,000 years, to wake up in the year 2999. The title character Aang in the animated series Avatar: The Last Airbender and its live action film adaptation saved himself from drowning in a tempest by creating an ice bubble, preserving him for about a hundred years. In a 2000 episode of the syndicated series Xena: Warrior Princess, the characters Xena and Gabrielle fake their own deaths only to be mistakenly entombed in an icy cave, where they are preserved for 25 years until an avalanche frees them. Aurora, a Spanish-based telenovela by telemundo deals with cryonics. A 20 year old woman is frozen and revived 20 years later, to fall in love with the son of her past love.

The most famous known cryopreserved patient is baseball player Ted Williams. The popular urban legend that Walt Disney was cryopreserved is false; he was cremated, and interred at Forest Lawn Memorial Park Cemetery. Robert A. Heinlein, who wrote enthusiastically of the concept, was cremated and had his ashes distributed over the Pacific Ocean. Timothy Leary was a long-time cryonics advocate, and signed up with a major cryonics provider. He changed his mind, however, shortly before his death, and so was not cryopreserved.