48 polyidos

Fountain of Life

2008-12-06T19:03:00.000-08:00

The Fountain of Life, or in its earlier form the Fountain of Living Waters, is a Christian iconography symbol associated with baptism, first appearing in the 5th century in illuminated manuscripts and later in other art forms such as panel paintings.

The symbol is usually shown as a fountain enclosed in a hexagonal structure capped by a rounded dome and supported by eight columns. The fountain of living waters, fons vivus[1] is a baptismal font (a water fountain in which one is baptized, and thus reborn with Christ), and is often surrounded by animals associated with Baptism such as the hart. The font probably represents the octagonal Lateran Baptistery in Rome, consecrated by Pope Sixtus III (432-440), which was iconographically associated with the fountain of the water of life mentioned in Revelation 21.6.

The best examples date from the Carolingian period: the Godescalc Evangelistary made to commemorate the Baptism of the son of Charlemagne in 781, and in the Soissons Gospels.

In the Ghent Altarpiece: The Adoration of the Lamb by Jan Van Eyck (1438), the Lamb of God stands upon an altar dressed as for the Mass of the Precious Blood, with a blood-red frontal: the Lamb's blood is caught in a chalice, and its Eucharistic intention is signaled by the dove of the Holy Spirit above. In the foreground, offering the other means of grace, is the Fountain of the Living Water surrounded by the faithful. In the Prado, Madrid, is the Fountain of Living Water emanating from the Lamb of God,[2] in which the open fountain is set into the outer wall of Heaven. That the water is not merely the purifying water of baptism is shown by the innumerable wafers that float upon its surface: the two sacraments are represented as one.

In a miniature in a Book of Hours[3], probably painted at Ghent at the end of the fifteenth century, the Fountain of Living Water has given way to a fountain of blood, the Fountain of Life. in which the figure of Christ stands upon a Gothic pedestal at the center and fills the fountain from his wounds, though the aureole that surrounds him identifies him as the transfigured Christ and the location as Paradise.

In Flanders at the close of the Middle Ages an intense devotion to the Precious Blood of Christ gave rise to an iconographic tradition of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, which rendered the theological concept of Grace,[4] expressing Roman Catholic dogma allegorically as a fountain of blood. This transformation was first addressed in Evelyn Underhill in 1910, taking her point of departure an Assembly of Saints and the Fountain of Life of 1596 in Ghent,[5] in which blood from the five Holy Wounds of Christ into the upper basin of a "Fountain of Life"[6] and streams out through openings in the lower "Fountain of Mercy". Saints and martyrs, patriarchs and prophets hold golden chalices of blood, which some empty into the fountain. Below the faithful hold out their hearts to receive droplets of blood.

Fountain of Youth

2008-12-06T19:02:00.000-08:00

The Fountain of Youth is a legendary spring that reputedly restores the youth of anyone who drinks of its waters. Florida is often said to be its location, and stories of the fountain are some of the most persistent associated with the state.

A long-standing story is that Spanish explorer Juan Ponce de León, Puerto Rico's first Governor, was searching for the Fountain of Youth when he traveled to present-day Florida, which he thought to be an island. He explored Florida in 1513. But the story did not start with him, nor was it unique to the New World. Herodotus mentions a fountain containing a very special kind of water located in the land of the Ethiopians. He attributes the exceptional longevity of the Ethiopians to this water.[1] Tales of healing waters date to at least the time of the Alexander Romance, and were popular right up to the European Age of Exploration.[2] The later legend derives from the "Water of Life" tale in the Eastern versions of the Alexander Romance, where Alexander and his servant cross the Land of Darkness to find the restorative spring. The servant in that story is in turn derived from Middle Eastern legends of Al-Khidr, a sage who appears also in the Qur'an. Arabic and Aljamiado versions of the Alexander Romance were very popular in Spain during and after the period of Moorish rule, and would have been known to the explorers who journeyed to America.

There are countless indirect sources for the tale as well. Eternal youth is a gift frequently sought in myth and legend, and stories of things such as the philosopher's stone, universal panaceas, and the elixir of life are common throughout Eurasia and elsewhere. An additional hint may have been taken from the account of the Pool of Bethesda in the Gospel of John, in which Jesus heals a man at the pool in Jerusalem.

The Arawaks and the land of Bimini

The native stories about the curative spring were related to the mythical land of "Beimeni", or Beniny, a land of wealth and prosperity. The spring was purportedly located on an island called Boinca. Although subsequent interpretations suggested the land was located in the vicinity of the Bahamas, the natives were referring to a location in the Gulf of Honduras.[2] The islands of Bimini in the Bahamas were known as La Vieja during the Ponce expedition. According to legend, the Spanish heard of Bimini from the Arawaks in Hispaniola, Cuba, and Puerto Rico. Sequene, an Arawak chief from Cuba, had purportedly been unable to resist the lure of Bimini and its restorative fountain. He gathered a troupe of adventurers and sailed north, never to return. Word spread among Sequene's more optimistic tribesmen that he and his followers had located the Fountain of Youth and were living in luxury in Bimini. Bimini and its curative waters were widespread subjects in the Caribbean. Italian-born chronicler Peter Martyr d'Anghiera (Peter Martyr) told of them in a letter to the pope in 1513, though he didn't believe the stories and was dismayed that so many others did.[3]

[edit] Ponce de León and Florida

The story continues that Juan Ponce de León heard of the fountain from the people of Puerto Rico when he conquered the island. Growing dissatisfied with his material wealth, he launched an expedition to locate it, and in the process discovered Florida. Though he was one of the first Europeans to set foot on the American mainland, he never found the Fountain of Youth.

The story is apocryphal. While Ponce de León may well have heard of the Fountain and believed in it, his name was not associated with the legend in writing until after his death. That connection is made in Gonzalo Fernández de Oviedo's Historia General y Natural de las Indias of 1535, in which he wrote that Ponce de León was looking for the waters of Bimini to cure his sexual impotence.[4] Some researchers have suggested that Oviedo's account may have been politically inspired to generate favor in the courts.[2] A similar account appears in Francisco López de Gómara's Historia General de las Indias of 1551.[5] In the Memoir of Hernando D'Escalante Fontaneda in 1575, the author places the restorative waters in Florida and mentions de León looking for them there; his account influenced Antonio de Herrera y Tordesillas' history of the Spanish in the New World.[6] Fontaneda had spent 17 years as an Indian captive after being shipwrecked in Florida as a boy. In his Memoir he tells of the curative waters of a lost river he calls "Jordan" and refers to de León looking for them. However, Fontaneda makes it clear he is skeptical about these stories he includes, and says he doubts de León was actually looking for the fabled stream when he came to Florida. Additionally, Ponce did not mention the fountain in his writings throughout the course of his expedition.[2]

It is Herrera who makes that connection definite in the romanticized version of Fontaneda's story included in his Historia general de los hechos de los Castellanos en las islas y tierra firme del Mar Oceano. Herrera states that local caciques paid regular visits to the fountain. A frail old man could become so completely restored that he could resume "all manly exercises… take a new wife and beget more children." Herrera adds that the Spaniards had unsuccessfully searched every "river, brook, lagoon or pool" along the Florida coast for the legendary fountain.[7] It would appear the Sequene story is likewise based on a garbling of Fontaneda.

The very last excursion of Ponce de León ended in the vicinity of the modern Port Charlotte, Florida. Within a very short distance from the site of his last battle lies Warm Mineral Springs. This spring has been in use for thousands of years. It is, therefore, conceivable that his last action was an attempt to reach this artesian well, and to ascertain whether it is the Fountain.

[edit] Earlier versions of the legend

As noted above, the concept of a Fountain of Youth was not new to Europeans when they heard of it in the Caribbean. A Fountain or Well of Youth had appeared in the Alexander Romance, the Travels of Sir John Mandeville and writings related to Prester John long before the Old World became old. Explorers of the time had a habit of projecting onto newly-found places what they had read in books of fantastic travels, as demonstrated by the naming of Amazonia, the insistence that Ethiopia's king was Prester John, and the speculation that the Earthly Paradise was to be found in Asia, the Americas, or wherever its seekers happened to be looking. When the Spanish heard native American stories of a youth-rendering spring in a land of plenty, they could not help but believe they had found the wonderful Fountain of Youth at last. Unfortunately, earlier native versions of the legend are not known outside of what snippets Spanish chroniclers managed to preserve of what is sure to have been a rich tradition.

[edit] The Fountain of Youth today
Postcard from the Fountain of Youth in St. Augustine

The city of St. Augustine, Florida is home to the Fountain of Youth National Archaeological Park, a tribute to the spot where Ponce de León is traditionally said to have landed. The tourist attraction was created by Luella Day McConnell in 1904. "Diamond Lil", as she was known, fabricated stories to amuse and appall the city’s residents and tourists until her death in 1927.[8]

Though the fountain situated there is not "the" Fountain, this does not stop tourists from drinking its water. The park exhibits native and colonial artifacts to celebrate St. Augustine's Timucuan and Spanish heritage.

In the book Weird Florida, part of the Weird U.S. series by Mark Moran and Mark Sceurman, author Charlie Carlson says he conversed with members of a supposed St. Augustine-based secret society claiming to be the protectors of the Fountain of Youth, which has granted them extraordinary longevity. They claimed Old John Gomez, a protagonist in the Gasparilla legend from Florida folklore, had been one of their members.[9] In August 2006, popular American magician David Copperfield claimed he had discovered a true "Fountain of Youth" amid a cluster of four small islands in the Exuma chain of the Bahamas which he recently purchased for roughly $50 million. "I've discovered a true phenomenon," he told Reuters in a telephone interview. "You can take dead leaves, they come in contact with the water, they become full of life again. … Bugs or insects that are near death, come in contact with the water, they'll fly away. It's an amazing thing, very, very exciting." Copperfield, who turned 50 in September 2006, says that he hired scientists to conduct an examination of the "legendary" water, but as of now, the fountain remains off limits to outside visitors.[10]

The Fountain of Youth lives on as a metaphor for anything that potentially increases longevity. It is a frequently used plot device in age regression stories. Nathaniel Hawthorne used the Fountain in "Dr. Heidegger's Experiment" to demonstrate that positive thinking is a far better remedy than deluded journeys to Florida for legendary cures; Orson Welles directed and starred in a 1958 TV program based on the legend;[11] and Tim Powers featured it in On Stranger Tides, a novel of 17th century voodoo adventure. In 1953, the Walt Disney Company created a cartoon entitled Don's Fountain of Youth, in which Donald Duck had supposedly discovered the famous fountain and can't resist pretending to his nephews that it really works. In 1974 Marvel Comics featured the Fountain (which works if bathed in, but cripples if drunk from) in Man-Thing and later The Savage She-Hulk, and in 2005 the Fountain turned up in the DC Comics series Day of Vengeance. The fountain and its waters form the main plot device in Microsoft and Ensemble Studio's Age of Empires III campaign "Blood, Ice and Steel". Recently, characters in the 2006 Darren Aronofsky film The Fountain search for the Tree of Life to cure a brain tumor. Jorge Luis Borges refers to the Fountain of Life in a short story in the book The Aleph, in which the people who are immortal get tired of it and eventually start looking for the Fountain of Death to reverse their immortality. The 2007 film Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End ends with Captain Jack Sparrow heading off to find the Fountain of Youth, positioned in southern Florida (Disneyworld, to be exact) according to his map. Also, The Mighty Boosh has an episode called 'The Fountain of Youth' where the two characters Vince Noir and Howard Moon go searching for it. An episode of Cartoon Network's Ben 10 focuses on the lead characters defending the Fountain of Youth before it is ultimately vaporized.

Shangri-La

2008-12-06T19:01:00.000-08:00

Shangri-La is a fictional place described in the 1933 novel Lost Horizon by British author James Hilton. In the book, "Shangri-La" is a mystical, harmonious valley, gently guided from a lamasery, enclosed in the western end of the Kunlun Mountains. Shangri-La has become synonymous with any earthly paradise but particularly a mythical Himalayan utopia—a permanently happy land, isolated from the outside world. In the novel Lost Horizon, the people who live at Shangri-La are almost immortal, living years beyond the normal lifespan. The word also evokes the imagery of exoticism of the Orient. The story of Shangri-La is based on the concept of Shambhala, a mystical city in the Tibetan Buddhist tradition.

Etymology of Shangri-La

The phrase "Shangri-La" most probably comes from the Tibetan ཞང་,"Shang - a district of Tsang, north of Tashilhunpo[1]" + རི, "Mountain" = "Shang Mountain" + ལ, Mountain Pass, which suggests that the area is accessed to, or is named by, "Shang Mountain Pass". However, it may be that Hilton had heard of Shambhala - the Tibetan equivalent of Shangri-La, but could not remember its name.

Zhongdian in Yunnan

Several locations in the Buddhist Himalaya between northern India and Tibet have claimed to be the basis for Hilton's legend, largely to attract tourism. In China, Tao Qian of the Jin Dynasty described a Shangri-La in his work Story of the Peach Blossom Valley (Chinese: 桃花源記, pinyin: Táohuā Yuán Jì)[citation needed]. In modern China, the Zhongdian country was renamed to 香格里拉县 (Xiānggélǐlā, Shanri-La in Chinese) in 2001, to attract tourists. The legendary Kun Lun Mountains in Tibet offer other possible Shangri-La valleys.

A popularly believed inspiration for Shangri-La is the Hunza Valley in northern Pakistan, close to the Tibetan border, which Hilton visited a few years before Lost Horizon was published.[2] Being an isolated green valley surrounded by mountains, enclosed on the western end of the Himalayas, it closely matches the description in the novel. A Shangri-La resort in the nearby Skardu valley is a popular tourist attraction.

Today, various places claim the title, such as parts of southern Kham in southwestern Yunnan province, including the tourist destinations of Lijiang and Zhongdian. Places like Sichuan and Tibet also claim the real Shangri-La was in its territory. In 2001, Tibet Autonomous Region put forward a proposal that the three regions optimise all Shangri-la tourism resources and promote them as one. After failed attempts to establish a China Shangri-la Ecological Tourism Zone in 2002 and 2003, government representatives of Sichuan and Yunnan provinces and Tibet Autonomous Region signed a declaration of cooperation in 2004. Also in 2001, Zhongdian County in northwestern Yunnan officially renamed itself Shangri-La County.

Bhutan, which was until now isolated from outside world and has its unique form of Tibetan Buddhism, has been hailed as the last Shangri-La.

Another place that has been thought to have inspired the concept of Shangri-La is the Yarlung Tsangpo Canyon.

TV Presenter and Historian Michael Wood suggests that the legendary Shangri-La is the abandoned city of Tsaparang and its two great temples that were once home to the Kings of Guge in modern Tibet.

[edit] Modern usage

There are a number of modern Shangri-La pseudo-legends that have developed since 1933 in the wake of the novel and the film made from it. The Nazis had an enthusiasm for Shangri-La, where they hoped to find an ancient master race, similar to the Nordic race, unspoiled by Buddhism. They sent one expedition to Tibet, led by Ernst Schäfer in 1938.

Another pseudo-legend involves the Ojai Valley as the location for the 1937 Frank Capra film Lost Horizon. The outdoor scenes of the villagers of Shangri-La and a cavorting Ronald Colman and Jane Wyatt were in fact filmed in nearby Sherwood Forest (Westlake Village) and Palm Springs. The exterior of the grand lamasery was built and later dismantled on the Columbia Ranch in Burbank, California.[3] However, according to film historian Kendall Miller in the photodocumentary bonus feature on the "Lost Horizon" DVD, an aerial shot of Ojai Valley taken from an outlook on Highway 150 was used to represent the Shangri-La valley.

United States President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, being considerably fond of Hilton's novel, named the presidential retreat now known as Camp David "Shangri-La" in 1942. In that April, United States bombers secretly launched from the aircraft carrier Hornet bombed Tokyo in a daring raid led by Colonel "Jimmy" Doolittle. Since Tokyo was far out of range of any American bomber base at the time, there was intense speculation as to where the bombers had come from. President Roosevelt facetiously told a press conference that the bombers had flown from Shangri-La. In line with this pleasantry, one of the aircraft carriers used in the Pacific ocean was subsequently named USS Shangri-La.

In 1937, Lutcher Stark, a prominent Texas philanthropist, started building his own Shangri-La in Orange, Texas. His Shangri-La was a beautiful azalea garden situated along a cypress/tupelo swamp. By 1950, thousands of people were traveling to Orange to visit Shangri La. Every major magazine dealing with gardens published photographs of the beautiful Shangri La in Texas. In 1958, a major snowstorm struck east Texas, destroying thousands of azaleas and closing the garden for forty years.

[edit] Use as metaphor and figure of speech

Shangri-la is often used in a similar context to which "Garden of Eden" might be used, to represent a perfect paradise that exists hidden from modern man. It can sometimes be used as an analogy for a life-long quest or something elusive that is much sought. For a man who spends his life obsessively looking for a cure to a disease, such a cure could be said to be that man's "Shangri-La". It also might be used to represent perfection that is sought by man in the form of love, happiness, or Utopian ideals. It may be used in this context alongside other mythical and famous examples of somewhat similar metaphors such as The Holy Grail, El Dorado, The Fountain of Youth, and to an extent "white whale" (referring to the white whale chased by the obsessed Captain Ahab in the book Moby-Dick).

Politically and geographically, the independent and previously-independent nations isolated from the West, such as Tibet, Nepal, Bhutan, Sikkim, Tuva, Mongolia, the Tocharian Tushara Kingdom of the Mahābhārata and the Han Dynasty outpost Dunhuang have each been termed Shangri-Las.

Longevity myths

2008-12-06T18:59:00.000-08:00

Longevity myths are cultural narratives that speak of exceptional, improbable or impossible longevity, with or without eternal youth. These stories include age exaggeration of various kinds.

They include the the Fountain of Youth myth, the "village elder" narrative, the story of Shangri-La, the Nationalist tale, etc. Each category of myth is based on a different motivation for age exaggeration.

The legendary Fountain of Youth is based upon a fantasy of living a very long time by taking potions, or finding some other secret that results in longevity combined with a youthful healthiness.

The "village elder" narrative is often based upon a pre-literate societal respect for aging, patriarchy, etc., which leads to a venerating age exaggeration of the oldest male (or sometimes female) in the village.

The Shangri-La myth is the idea that a certain remote mountain area may contain an entire village of long-lived (or eternally lived) people (such as Vilcabamba or Abkhazia).

The "Nationalist longevity myth" is an age exaggeration story motivated by nationalist pride (such as Stalin proclaiming special longevity in Soviet Georgia, because he was born in that country.)

There are, of course, other stories and reasons for age exaggeration. Some are personal (the P. T. Barnum story of longevity); that is, a person claims to be a great age to attract attention to oneself and/or to obtain money (such as Joice Heth, promoted in the 19th century by P. T. Barnum, she was claimed to be a 161-year-old woman, but she turned out to be only 80).

Patriarchal longevity myth

Stories of exaggerated longevity have been around since the earliest civilizations. The first longevity narratives were probably the patriarchal/matriarchal claims, which are often an attempt to link humans to the gods or to God. In many cases, the ages of ancestors were exaggerated, in order to extend a genealogy further back into the past. Such extreme exaggerations were used in Sumer; ages claimed corresponded to calendar cycles and special dates. One ancient Sumerian genealogy contains three kings who are recorded as having reigned 72,000 years each. [1]

A later and reduced form was used in Japan, which inflated the ages of emperors, in an attempt to date Japanese history to 660 BC (see Emperor Jimmu).

The early Patriarchs of the Bible are given extreme ages that are highest toward the beginning, with Adam reaching the age of 930, and Methuselah reaching 969 (Genesis 5). Some writers have attempted to explain these extreme ages as ancient mistranslations, which converted the word "month" to "year". If this were true, it would turn the claimed 969 "years" of Methuselah into 969 months, or a more reasonable 80 years.[2] However this theory if applied to other verses would make Kenan and Mahalalel only 5 years old when they fathered their sons. Other writers have suggested that "years" was translated correctly, but the numbers were an ancient mistranslation.[3] Other Biblical scholars believe that some of the numbers have a symbolic meaning: Enoch is said to have 365 years which, being the number of days in a year, would indicate his having lived "a full life". Still others point out that there are only 10 names in this genealogical list, so that the list may contain generational gaps, which are covered by the lengthy lifetimes attributed to the patriarchs. [4]

The ancient Roman author Lucian is the presumed author of Macrobii (long-livers), which is devoted to longevity. He gives some mythical examples like that of Nestor, who allegedly lived three centuries, or Tiresias, the blind seer of Thebes, who was claimed to be alive for 600 years. But most of the examples Lucien gives are what would be regarded as normal long lifespans (80-100 years). He also wrote about the Seres (Chinese people), who he claimed live for 300 years.

[edit] Village elder myth

The second longevity narrative, that of the village elder, is probably a reduced version of patriarchal myth. According to these myths, it is generally assumed that persons today cannot attain the ages of the ancients, but nonetheless one's village elder should be honored.

This kind of story originally centered on a tribal chieftain, but in places where local power was distributed, elderly women began to be substituted. The village elder represented a source of pride, oral tradition and a person to commemorate. The ages claimed tended to be limited by one's ability to believe them. Most claims of this type have been for ages of less than 200 years old, with ages of 140, 150 and 160 seemingly representing the cusp of believability for the locals. In times when written records came into existence for the upper class (i.e. Ancient Rome), reports from the countryside continued the same pattern of overestimation of age. These popular tales continue to exist even today in places such as Bangladesh.

[edit] Fountain of Youth myth

Main article: Fountain of Youth

The more recent Fountain of Youth myth seems to have evolved differently. Many people in Europe feared death (especially after the ravages of the Black Death, which began in the 1340s), and sought ways to extend their own life span. Unlike the previous tales, which were rooted in patriarchal, ancient and communal beliefs, the Fountain of Youth narrative is anchored in an individual's wishes for a longer and healthier life, and dates from medieval and Renaissance times. The idea that humans could transform their own substance, using techniques such as alchemy) became popular during the 15th and 16th centuries. Consequently, Spanish conquistadors, already searching for fabulous cities of gold, added the idea of finding the "Fountain of Youth". Juan Ponce de León explored Florida in 1513, in hopes of finding such a magical source.

This need was exploited by charlatans and snake oil salesmen who tried to sell potions for longevity. They would search out a very old person, and then claim that person as an example of successful use of the potion. The idea continues today, in reduced form, but was still very prevalent in the 1970s, when claims of extreme longevity for yoghurt eaters in the Caucasus led to the use of some of these people in Dannon yoghurt advertising. Recently, this myth was invoked to explain Cuba's longevity.[5]

[edit] Shangri-La longevity myth

Main article: Shangri-La

An extension and adaptation of the Fountain of Youth myth is the idea that a particular place, rather than a substance, carries what is needed to attain extreme age; a person seeking extreme longevity needs to move to a special district, a "Shangri-La." This story differs from the Fountain of Youth in that it focuses on an entire village or mountain region (see beforementioned regions of Caucasus and Vilcabamba, plus Goust and Hunza Valley). Thus, the Caucasus did not merely claim to have a 168-year-old, but to have hundreds of people aged 120+. Instead of one village elder, the entire village is a "village of centenarians." In some cases, apparent age "heaping" showed how unreliable the age claims were: in places like the Hunza Valley, the oldest ages reported often ended in 0 or 5 (140, 135, 130, 125, 120)[citation needed], indicating the age was a guess, not a real measurement.

In Roman times, Pliny wrote about longevity records from the census carried out in 74 A.D. under Vespasian. In one region of Italy many people lived past 100. Four were 130, others were even older. Ascribing unique longevity to a particular 'village of centenarians' is common across many cultures; Japan had such myths until written records eventually did away with them.

[edit] Nationalist longevity myth

An outgrowth of the Shangri-La idea is the "nationalist longevity" narrative. This idea was rooted in the rise of nationalism in the 20th century. As people's ideas became focused on their nation versus another, extreme age claims became a source of national pride. In the U.S., in the 1970 Census, 106,000 people claimed to be 100 years old or older (some 130+) as the U.S. sought to counter Soviet claims that the Soviet communist "lifestyle" resulted in extreme longevity. The Soviets merely borrowed the localist traditions of the Caucasus, and adapted them to a Marxist ideology. The U.S. did not go as far, but to stem the tide, even publications such as Time Magazine in 1967 featured Sylvester Magee, allegedly 126, and Charlie Smith, allegedly 125. Both of these claims may have been put forth by publicity-seeking individuals, but the national media chose to elevate these unsubstantiated claims in the context of ideology (not surprisingly, they were a counterfoil to the USSR claim that Shirali Mislimov was in his 160s).

Longevity narratives fell somewhat out of vogue in the late 1970s, when both US and USSR experts came forward to debunk both sides. However, in Cuba, local nationalism still fueled unverified claims quite recently, such that the world's oldest man was claimed to be Benito Martínez. Still within the context of Marxist ideology but perhaps motivated more by nationalism, claims such as Du Pinhua's of China (a claim used to counter Japan's Kamato Hongo as the world's oldest person at the time).

[edit] Religious/spiritual myths of longevity

In some religious traditions there are claims that if one follows a certain philosophy or practice, a person can become immortal or at least live to an extreme age (some Taoists claimed to have lived to over 200 years; these were related to practice, not genealogy, as is the case of Li Ching-Yuen).

Swami Bua claims to be a different age each time he is interviewed, but generally claims to have been born around 1889. Offering no actual evidence, the message seems to be that meditation leads to extreme longevity. While scientific evidence does show some benefit from meditation, spiritualism and faith, measurable longevity tends to fall within the normal span (e.g. ages 109 and 110 in Iowa), and there is no evidence that religion, philosophy, practice, meditation, etc. has actually extended the human life span.

One story from Britain is that of Saint Kentigern (patron saint of Glasgow), who died shortly after 600 at the alleged age of 185. Today his age is given as 85 rather than 185. In Continental Europe, Saint Servatius, bishop of Tongeren, was consecrated at the alleged age of 297, and is said to have lived for 375 years.

[edit] Other longevity myths

Other longevity myths include ones that are race based or family based. Some people believe that a certain race (theirs) tends to live longer than others, despite no scientific evidence. On a smaller scale, many families tend to believe that their own family members live a very long time. The further back in the past the story goes, the easier it is to insert a family member aged 108, 111, 120, etc., usually with no supporting evidence.

Many people in the 1950s falsely claimed to be Confederate veterans, in a narrative of Southern longevity. Walter Williams claimed to be 117 in 1959; in 1973 a woman claimed to be a Confederate widow at 117. Research in 1959 indicated that Williams was really 105, not 117, years old.

Annibal Camoux died in 1759 in Marseilles (France) at the alleged age of 121.

[edit] Current status

As the Guinness Book of World Records states in numerous editions from the 1960s to the 1980s, "No single subject is more obscured by vanity, deceit, falsehood, and deliberate fraud than the extremes of human longevity." At the time, Guinness had never acknowledged anyone as having reached the age of 114, but verifiable records have become more common recently. The first three people to be acknowledged by Guinness as reaching 114 have all had their claims disputed. The first two people Guinness accepted as reaching 113, both of whom were male, have now been discredited. It has since been determined that some 90% of persons who have reached the age of 113 have been female. See list of the verified oldest people.

Even as of 2008[update], with recordholder Jeanne Calment having died at the undisputed age of 122, the following is true:

* Only approximately seventy people in human history have been documented as reaching the age of 114.
* Only about twenty-five people reached the age of 115.
* Of the ten people regarded by the Guinness Book or significant scholars to have reached 116 three are subject to substantial doubt.
* Calment is the only person with absolutely undisputed evidence to have lived to be over 120.

Yet despite these facts, stories still surface claiming that these extremes have been exceeded. A National Geographic article in 1973 treated with respect some claims that have subsequently been disproven, including the notorious Vilcabamba valley in Ecuador, where locals claimed ancestors' baptismal records as their own. That article also reported a very aged people, the Hunza in a mountain region of Pakistan, without any documentary evidence being cited.

It is typical that extreme longevity claims come from remote areas where recordkeeping is poor. However, generally speaking, the life expectancy is rather lower in these areas than in the areas where undisputed claims are typically found. The Caribbean nation of Dominica was lately promoting the allegedly 128-year-old Elizabeth Israel (1875?-2003), but Dominica has a smaller population and a lower life expectancy than Iceland, where documentation is very good and life expectancy is very high, and yet the longevity record in Iceland is a mere 109.

The Caucasus mountain region of Azerbaijan was the subject of extreme claims for decades, inspired by the desire of Stalin to believe that he would live a very long time, the most extreme claim there being that of Shirali Muslimov (1805?-1973).

In Jaipur, Rajasthan, India, Habib Miyan claimed that he was born in 1878, 1872 and 1869. Actually, his age is unknown, because he does not have a birth certificate. However, according to a state issued pension book that he claimed was his (even though it is issued in a different name, Rahim Khan), it says that Rahim Khan was born on 20 May 1878. However, independent researchers have not been able to verify Miyan's age.

In 2003, health officials in Chechnya declared that Zabani Khakimova was at least 124 years old, but her age was never authenticated; she died in 2003. In 2004, The Moscow (Russia) Times reported on Pasikhat Dzhukalayeva, also of Chechnya, who claims to have been born in 1881. But, as with Mrs. Khakimova, Mrs. Dzhukalayeva's age has not been authenticated.

Brazil has made several unsubstantiated claims, starting with Maria do Carmo Geronimo (1871?-2000). On 3 March 2005, the Associated Press reported that Maria Olivia da Silva, who claims to have been born on 28 February 1880, had been recognized by RankBrasil as the oldest-living woman in the country. Guinness has been unable to verify her date of birth. RankBrasil, a competitor of Guinness, had previously promoted the claim of Ana Martins da Silva (1880?-2004) and that her records were sent to Guinness[6], but the claim was never validated.

An earlier claim from South America was for Javier Pereira (said to have been determined to be 167 years old by a dentist looking at his teeth). There have likewise been a scattering of extreme claims from Africa, the most recent being Namibia's Anna Visser, who died in January 2004 at an alleged 125 or 126, and Moloko Temo of South Africa, who was said to be 130 when she voted in the April 2004 election.

The most extreme claim in the 20th century was a wire story announcing in 1933 that China's Li Ching-Yuen, born in 1680, had died at age 256 (if it were true, he actually would have been 252 or 253).

In prior centuries there have been other claims, one of the best-known being Thomas Parr, introduced to London in 1635 with the claim that he was 152 years old, who promptly died and was buried in Westminster Abbey. Greater English claims include those of the allegedly 169-year-old Henry Jenkins (apparently concocted to support testimony in a court case about events a century before) and the supposedly 207-year-old Thomas Carn (died in 1588 by most reports). Sir Walter Raleigh, amongst others, claimed that the Irish countess, Katherine Fitzgerald, lived to the age of 140 years (and allegedly died by falling from a tree as she picked cherries for breakfast).

Longevity narratives did not come in for serious scrutiny until the work of W.J. Thoms in 1873, and the odd wire correspondent looking for a captivating filler reports extreme undocumented claims to this day: in early 2000, a Nepalese man claimed to have been born in 1832, citing as evidence a card issued in 1988. In December 2003, a Chinese news service claimed incorrectly that Guinness had recognized a woman in Saudi Arabia as being 131.

Responsible validation of longevity claims involves investigation of records following the claimant from birth to the present, and claims far outside the demonstrated records regularly fail such scrutiny. The United States Social Security Administration has public death records of over 100 people said to have died in their 160s to 190s.

Genetic engineering

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Genetic engineering, recombinant DNA technology, genetic modification/manipulation (GM) and gene splicing are terms that apply to the direct manipulation of an organism's genes.[1] Genetic engineering is different from traditional breeding, where the organism's genes are manipulated indirectly; genetic engineering uses the techniques of molecular cloning and transformation to alter the structure and characteristics of genes directly. Genetic engineering techniques have found some successes in numerous applications. Some examples are in improving crop technology, the manufacture of synthetic human insulin through the use of modified bacteria, the manufacture of erythropoietin in hamster ovary cells, and the production of new types of experimental mice such as the oncomouse (cancer mouse) for research.

Engineering
1. Isolation of the genes of interest
2. Insertion of the genes into a transfer vector
3. Transfer of the vector to the organism to be modified
4. Transformation of the cells of the organism
5. Separation of the genetically modified organism (GMO) from those that have not been successfully modified

Isolation is achieved by identifying the gene of interest that the scientist wishes to insert into the organism, usually using existing knowledge of the various functions of genes. DNA information can be obtained from cDNA or gDNA libraries, and amplified using PCR techniques. If necessary, i.e. for insertion of eukaryotic genomic DNA into prokaryotes, further modification may be carried out such as removal of introns or ligating prokaryotic promoters.

Insertion of a gene into a vector such as a plasmid can be done once the gene of interest is isolated. Other vectors can

Werner Arber and Hamilton Smith received the 1978 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for their isolation of restriction endonucleases.

Once the vector is obtained, it can be used to transform the target organism. Depending on the vector used, it can be complex or simple. For example, using raw DNA with DNA guns is a fairly straightforward process but with low success rates, where the DNA is coated with molecules such as gold and fired directly into a cell. Other more complex methods, such as bacterial transformation or using viruses as vectors have higher success rates.

After transformation, the GMO can be isolated from those that have failed to take up the vector in various ways.

Genetic Engineering

Although there has been a revolution in the biological sciences in the past twenty years, there is still a great deal that remains to be discovered. The completion of the sequencing of the human genome, as well as the genomes of most agriculturally and scientifically important animals and plants, has increased the possibilities of genetic research immeasurably. Expedient and inexpensive access to comprehensive genetic data has become a reality with billions of sequenced nucleotides already online and annotated.
Knockout mice

* Loss of function experiments, such as in a gene knockout experiment, in which an organism is engineered to lack the activity of one or more genes. This allows the experimenter to analyze the defects caused by this mutation, and can be considerably useful in unearthing the function of a gene. It is used especially frequently in developmental biology. A knockout experiment involves the creation and manipulation of a DNA construct in vitro, which, in a simple knockout, consists of a copy of the desired gene which has been slightly altered such as to cripple its function. The construct is then taken up by embryonic stem cells, where the engineered copy of the gene replaces the organism's own gene. These stem cells are injected into blastocysts, which are implanted into surrogate mothers. Another method, useful in organisms such as Drosophila (fruitfly), is to induce mutations in a large population and then screen the progeny for the desired mutation. A similar process can be used in both plants and prokaryotes.
* Gain of function experiments, the logical counterpart of knockouts. These are sometimes performed in conjunction with knockout experiments to more finely establish the function of the desired gene. The process is much the same as that in knockout engineering, except that the construct is designed to increase the function of the gene, usually by providing extra copies of the gene or inducing synthesis of the protein more frequently.

Green Fluorescent Protein ribbon diagram. From PDB 1EMA

.

* Tracking experiments, which seek to gain information about the localization and interaction of the desired protein. One way to do this is to replace the wild-type gene with a 'fusion' gene, which is a juxtaposition of the wild-type gene with a reporting element such as Green Fluorescent Protein (GFP) that will allow easy visualization of the products of the genetic modification. While this is a useful technique, the manipulation can destroy the function of the gene, creating secondary effects and possibly calling into question the results of the experiment. More sophisticated techniques are now in development that can track protein products without mitigating their function, such as the addition of small sequences which will serve as binding motifs to monoclonal antibodies.
* Expression studies aim to discover where and when specific proteins are produced. In these experiments the DNA sequence before the DNA that codes for a protein, known as a gene's promoter is reintroduced into an organism with the protein coding region replaced by a reporter gene such as GFP or an enzyme that catalyzes the production of a dye. Thus the time and place where a particular protein is produced can be observed. Expression studies can be taken a step further by altering the promoter to find which pieces are crucial for the proper expression of the gene and are actually bound by transcription factor proteins; this process is known as promoter bashing.

===Human genetic engineering===↓

See also: Human genetic engineering

Human genetic engineering can be used to treat genetic disease, but there is a difference between treating the disease in an individual and in changing the genome that gets passed down to that person's descendants (germ-line genetic engineering).

Human genetic engineering is already being used on a small scale to allow infertile women with genetic defects in their mitochondria to have children.[2] Healthy human eggs from a second mother are used. The child produced this way has genetic information from two mothers and one father.[2] The changes made are germ line changes and will likely be passed down from generation to generation, thus are a permanent change to the human genome.[2]

Human genetic engineering has the potential to change human beings' appearance, adaptability, intelligence, character and behaviour. It may potentially be used in creating more dramatic changes in humans. There are many unresolved ethical issues and concerns surrounding this technology, and it remains a controversial topic.

Generation ship

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A generation ship is a hypothetical starship that travels across great distances between stars at a speed much slower than that of light (see interstellar travel). Since such a ship might take from as little as below a hundred years to tens or even hundreds of thousands of years to reach even nearby stars, the original occupants might either grow old or die during the journey and leave their descendants to continue traveling, depending on the life span of its inhabitants and relativistic effects of time dilation.

It is estimated that, in order to assure genetic diversity during a centuries-long trip, a generation starship would require at least 160 inhabitants[1]. Sperm banks or egg banks can drastically reduce the requisite number. Additionally, the ship would have to be almost entirely self-sustaining (see biosphere and life support), providing food, air, and water for everyone on board. It must also have extraordinarily reliable systems that could be maintained by the ship's inhabitants over long periods of time.

It has been suggested that humans create large, self-sustaining space habitats before sending generation ships to the stars.[citation needed] Each space habitat could be effectively isolated from the rest of humanity for a century or more, but remain close enough to Earth for help. This would test whether thousands of humans can survive on their own before sending them beyond the reach of help.

Some have compared planets with life to generation ships. This idea is usually called "Spaceship Earth".

Orphans of the Sky

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Orphans of the Sky is a 1963 science fiction novel by Robert A. Heinlein, consisting of two parts: "Universe" (Astounding Science Fiction, May 1941) and its sequel, "Common Sense" (Astounding Science Fiction, October 1941). "Universe" was also published separately as a Dell book in 1951 and was included in The Science Fiction Hall of Fame, Volume Two in 1973.

Although part of Heinlein's "Future History" series, Orphans of the Sky (or its component stories) is not included in the omnibus Future History volume, The Past Through Tomorrow.

Plot synopsis

The gigantic, cylindrical generation ship Vanguard, originally destined for Proxima Centauri, is cruising pilotless through interstellar space as a result of a failed mutiny that killed all of the piloting officers. The descendants of the surviving crew have forgotten the purpose and nature of their ship over time and lapsed into a pre-technological culture infested with superstition. Most crew members lead a simple illiterate life of farming, never venturing to the "upper decks" where the "muties" (mutants or mutineers) dwell. These descendants of the loyalists — who live in the lower, outer levels of the cylinder — believe their world is the entire Universe, not realizing they live inside a spaceship. They are ruled by an oligarchy of "Officers" and "Scientists", whose head is the putative heir or successor of the original Captain.

They still use the term "The Ship" for where they live, but it has come to mean "The World" or in fact "The Universe" so that "To move the ship" is considered an oxymoron. Old texts talking of "The Voyage" are intrepreted as a metaphor for the voyage from birth to death.
The 1951 Dell printing of "Universe"

The story is told from the perspective of an unusually intelligent and curious young man, Hugh Hoyland. Hugh has been selected to apprentice to the ranks of the Scientists, who ritualistically perform the technical tasks needed to keep the ship running (such as "feeding" trash into the power converter for lighting and environmental control). While on a mission to hunt down Muties, Hugh is captured and taken to the inner, low-weight, Mutie-controlled levels. He becomes the slave of the two-headed Mutie leader, Joe-Jim, who shows him the true nature of the Universe by taking him forward to the bridge and letting him look outside the ship through the bridge windows.

This revelation creates an epiphany for Hugh. He convinces Joe-Jim they should complete the Vanguard's mission and navigate the Ship to its intended destination (preserved in fable as "Far Centauri"). They are able to convince key Crew members to join the effort, but are double-crossed by the Officers just before their goal is achieved. Fleeing an attack from the Crew intended to rid the Ship of all Muties, Hugh's followers retreat to the one remaining lifeboat, escape the Ship, and land on a moon of a gas giant planet in a system through which the ship is passing. By chance, the moon has a Earth-like oxygen-nitrogen atmosphere, and temperature and life forms, which provides a welcome home for the refugees.

The Vanguard is the sister ship of the New Frontiers, the ship stolen by the Howard families in the story Methuselah's Children. The final fate of the Vanguard, and of the descendents of the survivors who landed on the moon, are mentioned in passing in the novel Time Enough for Love.

"Universe" was also performed as a radio play on the NBC Radio Network programs Dimension X (on November 26, 1951) and X Minus One (on May 15, 1955). This version has several drastic changes to the story, especially in its conclusion, where Hugh is killed showing the crew of the Vanguard the true nature of the Ship.

Methuselah's Children

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Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Methuselah's Children

First Edition cover
Author Robert A. Heinlein
Country United States
Language English
Series Future History
Genre(s) Science fiction novel
Publisher Gnome Press
Publication date 1958
Media type Print (Hardback & Paperback)
Pages 188 pp
ISBN ISBN 0-451-09083-7
Preceded by "Misfit"
Followed by Orphans of the Sky

Methuselah's Children is a 1941 science fiction novel by Robert A. Heinlein, originally serialised in Astounding Science Fiction (July, August, September 1941). It was expanded into a full-length novel in 1958. In 1997, Methuselah's Children won the Prometheus Hall of Fame Award for Best Classic Libertarian Sci-Fi novel.

Heinlein used his "Future History" series of stories (The Man Who Sold the Moon, Revolt in 2100, etc.) as a background for this novel about the long-lived Howard Families, star travel, and human freedom. In it, he details his views of various types of government, and finds them all wanting.

This is the first appearance of Lazarus Long, who becomes, through the series, so old that often when he miscalculates his age he is off by an entire century. Other Lazarus Long books include Time Enough For Love, The Number of the Beast, The Cat Who Walks Through Walls and To Sail Beyond the Sunset. This book also features an appearance by the mathematical genius Andrew "Slipstick" Libby, previously seen as a young adult in the short story "Misfit."

Heinlein returned to the Lazarus Long character towards the end of his career, making this the base for his interrelated novels involving time travel, parallel dimensions, free love, voluntary incest, and a concept that Heinlein called "pantheistic solipsism" or "world-as-myth" — the theory that universes are created by the act of imagining them, so that somewhere, even fictional worlds such as the Land of Oz are real.

Plot summary

The Howard Families (the titular Methuselah's Children) derive from Ira Howard, who became rich in the California Gold Rush, but who himself died young and left no children. Fearing death himself, he left his money for the prolongation of human life, and the trustees under his will carried out his intention by financially encouraging those with long-lived grandparents to marry and have children. While the Families (who, by the 22nd Century, have a life expectancy of 150 years) have kept their existence secret, with the enlightened human society established under The Covenant, they begin a limited exposure of themselves.

Society refuses to believe that the Howard Families simply 'chose their ancestors wisely', instead insisting that they have developed a method to extend life. When the Howard Families fail to produce any such techniques, the Families are persecuted and interned. Though the beleaguered Administrator (Prime Minister) of the planet, Slayton Ford, knows that the Families are telling the truth, he is helpless to control an increasingly irrational public – and as a democratically elected official he must act on the behalf of the majority no matter the consequences. He can visualize only two horrific solutions – and is wracked with self-hatred as he tries to imagine which would be more humane: mass execution or mass sterilization. In short, his duty as a democratic leader is to commit genocide. He decides this, although he knows that this will finish him in politics and likely mean his exile.

Lazarus Long realizes this as well, and proposes an alternative – that the Administrator assist them in hijacking the colony starship New Frontiers. To survive, the Howard Families must embark on an exodus to the stars. Ford, thrown out of office when his executive council feels he is not doing enough to wrest the "secret" from the Families, himself joins the trek at the last moment to escape the wrath of his former constituency. A member of the Families, Andrew Jackson Libby, (known as "Slipstick" Libby because he is a Mental calculator) is a genius who invents a light-hugging stardrive. This permits them to travel between stars in years instead of centuries.

The first planet they discover has humanoid inhabitants who seem friendly and advanced - however, they are merely domestic animals belonging to the planet's true masters, indescribable beings of equally indescribable power. When humans prove incapable of similar domestication, they are expelled from the planet and sent to another world.

The second planet seems far more welcoming - it is a lush environment with no predators and mild weather. Its inhabitants are just as welcoming, though just as strange as the other two races the Families have met - they are a group mind. Their abilities are in a way even more impressive than the inhabitants of the first planet the Families visited: the reason the planet is so welcoming is because they have made it so with a form of genetic engineering. However, their civilization is perhaps even more unsuitable for the Families than the master/pet civilization. This becomes evident when Mary Sperling, second oldest of the Families behind Long, who has always been fearful of death, joins the group mind in an attempt to become truly immortal.When the first baby conceived on the planet is born, the Families are horrified. The group mind has altered it as they have the planet, and though objectively the alterations are an improvement (every organ is more efficient, potent and better arranged, along with secondary miniature hands supported by miniature eyes) many cannot consider it human.

Lazarus calls a mass meeting of the humans on the planet. He states that humans are what they are because they are individuals, and that he feels he has no place on this world. He asks if any agree with him. Thus, though about a fourth of their number remain on the planet, Lazarus, and a majority of the Families, decides it's time to go back to Earth and claim their rights. Libby, with the help of the group mind, has designed a true faster than light drive - they can be home in just months.

The Families return to the Solar System to discover that their travels have taken seventy-five Earth-years. To their surprise they find that on earth great longevity is commonplace. Spurred on by the (false) belief that there was some specific "technique" to the Howards' longevity, Earth's inhabitants have explored every avenue known to science to duplicate the feat; and have succeeded through the production of artificial blood, to be transfused into recipients and keep them "younger." Thus, the Families are no longer threatened - in fact they now possess something even more important than immortality: faster than light travel! The Solar System is incredibly crowded (one now must acquire a licence to have a child!), and immigration to other worlds can prevent catastrophe. Libby and Long decide to recruit other members of the Families, and explore space with the new drive.

The New Frontiers is the second generation ship in this timeline; following the Vanguard, the vehicle for Heinlein's paired novellas, "Universe" and "Common Sense" (combined as Orphans of the Sky).

Lazarus Long

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Lazarus Long is a fictional character featured in a number of science fiction novels by Robert A. Heinlein. Born in 1912 in the third generation of a long-life selective breeding experiment run by the Ira Howard Foundation, Lazarus (whose birth name is Woodrow Wilson Smith) turns out to be unusually long-lived, living well over two thousand years with the aid of occasional rejuvenation treatments.

His exact (natural) life span is never determined. In his introduction at the beginning of Methuselah's Children he guesses his age to be 213 years old. Approximately 75 years pass during the course of the novel, which ends with the first form of rejuvenation being developed. However, because large amounts of this time are spent traveling interstellar distances at speeds approaching that of light, the 75-year measurement is an expression of the time elapsed in his absence rather than how much time passed from his perspective. At one point, he estimates his natural life span to be around 250 years, but this figure is not expressed with certainty. Heinlein acknowledged that such a long life span should not be expected as a result of a mere three generations of selective breeding, but offers no alternative explanation except for letting a character declare, "A mutation, of course—which simply says that we don't know".[1]

In one scene in Methuselah's Children, Long says that he visited Hugo Pinero, the scientist in Heinlein's first published story ("Life-Line"). Pinero possessed a machine that was capable of measuring how long a human would live. When Pinero measures Long, he does not provide an answer; he simply advises Long that the machine is broken. The story does not explicitly state whether Pinero's reading was simply so high as to defy belief, Lazarus' later travels in time made a reading impossible, or the reading indicates that Long will never die, though Lazarus seems to believe the last explanation. He is actually told, at the end of Time Enough For Love, that he cannot die and, even though it is possible the statement was simply made in an effort to comfort him, it can be viewed as a legitimate claim because he and his family had, by that time, mastered time travel, allowing any death to be prevented by intervention.

The promotional copy on the back of Time Enough For Love, the second book featuring the character of Lazarus Long, states that Lazarus was "so in love with time that he became his own ancestor," but this never happens in any of the published books and is almost certainly a misunderstanding on the part of the copywriter (such back copy is rarely written by the author of the work it appears on). In the book, Lazarus does at one point travel back in time and have sex with his mother, but this affair happens after the birth of Lazarus. Heinlein did, however, use a similar plot in the short story "All You Zombies—" in which a character does become his own ancestor.

A rugged individualist with a distrust of authority, Lazarus drifts from colony world to colony world, settling down for a few years or a few decades and leaving when things get too regimented for his taste—often just before the angry mob arrives.

The Lazarus Long set of books involve time travel, parallel dimensions, free love, consensual incest, and a concept that Heinlein named pantheistic solipsism—the theory that universes are created by the act of imagining them so that somewhere the Land of Oz is real.

Appearances

Novels featuring Lazarus include:

* Methuselah's Children (1941)
* Time Enough for Love (1973)
* The Number of the Beast (1980)
* The Cat Who Walks Through Walls (1985)
* To Sail Beyond the Sunset (1987)

[edit] The Lives of Lazarus Long

When the character of Lazarus Long is introduced in Methuselah's Children, he is 224 years old, and the breeding experiment that created the Howard Families has proven to be a success, with most "Howards" enjoying a lifespan of approximately 150 years. The Howards have, to this point, existed in secret, changing identities when needed to conceal their long lifespans. Ten percent of their number have elected to end "The Masquerade" and live publicly, with the approval of the Howard Foundation, but this process has backfired.

The general public of Earth, once faced with the inescapable reality, believes incorrectly that the Howards have discovered some sort of anti-aging process that they are choosing to conceal, despite the fact that the truth has been made public. Public resentment of this process builds slowly, until it reaches a boiling point. Civil liberties, as applied to the Howards, are suspended, and the entire membership of the Howard Families is detained, with the exception of Lazarus himself.

With the aid of the elected head of the world government, Slayton Ford, Lazarus hijacks the New Frontiers, a very large starship designed to travel to distant stars, and then liberates the Howards. While the New Frontiers was designed to sustain a colony in travel at speeds significantly below the speed of light, a Howard named Andrew Jackson "Slipstick" Libby has developed a way to boost the ship to speeds just under that of light itself. With the ship so modified, the Howard Families, under the leadership of Lazarus Long, escape the solar system in search of a planet of their own.

The first planet they encounter is populated by the Jockaira, who turn out to be little more than domesticated animals for an unnamed species they see as gods. When it becomes clear to the latter that humans cannot be domesticated, all of the humans are forcefully removed from the planet and placed in their ship, which is then pushed to another star system and planet. The technology used for this is so advanced that it is not observable by the humans.

This second planet is populated by a diminutive furry species called "The Little People," who are a very advanced collective intelligence. They are very accommodating to the humans, and in fact their world is pleasant enough to be considered a paradise. After many years, Mary Sperling—a close friend of Lazarus and the second-oldest of the Howard Families—joins the collective intelligence in order to escape her persistent fear of death. Lazarus (and many other Howards) are so disturbed by this that the decision is made to return to Earth. Around twelve thousand remain behind, but the rest return to Earth with the aid of even further advanced technology learned from the Little People.

Upon their return to Earth, the Howards learn that a rejuvenation treatment has been developed based on new blood grown in vitro. This is believed to be the secret to eternal life the Howards had taken with them when they departed. The political pressure to learn that secret has been so powerful as to force this technique to be discovered independently. Lazarus, who has been expecting death at any time due to extreme old age, now has a new lease on life.

Some details of the next two thousand years of his life are covered in Time Enough For Love through exposition and flashback. Most of the details of his life for this two thousand year span are not disclosed, although he has stated that he has worked in practically every conceivable occupation, including (but not limited to) actor, musician, beggar, farmer, priest, pilot, politician, con artist, gambler, doctor, lawyer, banker, merchant, soldier, electronics technician, mechanic, restaurateur, investor, and slave. (He also tells of one point in time where he was the manager of a bordello on Mars, which took place prior to the events of Methuselah's Children.) Lazarus' own restless nature, his penchant for shady dealings and "normal" humans' envy and hate of long-lifers such as himself have caused him to change identities and planets numerous times over his many years, and the forematter of the book lists some of them, including "Captain Aaron Sheffield," "Mr. Justice Lenox," "Proscribed Prisoner No. 83M2742," "Dr. Lafayette 'Lafe' Hubert," and "His Serenity Seraphim the Younger, Supreme High Priest of the One God in All His Aspects and Arbiter Below and Above."

Lazarus led the Howard Families on another exodus, this time to a planet he had discovered called Secundus. Lazarus himself, however, was not content to remain on Secundus, and headed back out to pioneer several more planets.

One of the stories told in Time Enough For Love begins with his return to Blessed, a theocratic planet with a state-sponsored slave trade. Lazarus himself had been a slave on this planet several generations prior, but declines to give details; although from other stories in the novel, it is possible he worked his way up from slavery through the church. He had returned to Blessed for commercial reasons, but his experience as a slave there makes him unable to ignore a high priced closed-bid slave auction for what appears to be two ordinary slaves. The slave merchant advises him that these slaves (Joseph and Estrellita) are, through genetic manipulation, both brother and sister (twins, in fact) and a perfect breeding pair. When he sees that the girl is in a chastity belt, he is so outraged that he purchases the pair and immediately frees them. He takes the pair with him and teaches them how to support themselves as free people, as well as giving them the general education that they had not been given as slaves. Because of their upbringing, they consider themselves to be a mating couple, and 'Llita becomes pregnant. Lazarus, as ship's captain, performs their wedding ceremony, and eventually assists them in setting up a small restaurant, and then later a larger one. After a number of years have passed, the "twins" realize that they are not aging as much as they would expect, and Lazarus infers that they are probably his descendants. (It is suggested in the introduction of Time Enough For Love that by the time of that book's opening, a vast majority of the human race (and almost all of the Howard Families) are descended from him.)

Another story picks up a short time after the colonization of a planet called New Beginnings. Lazarus adopts a young girl named Dora Brandon whose parents are killed in a fire. He raises her as her foster uncle, and when she reaches adulthood, prepares to leave the planet. Dora, in the meantime, has realized that he is a member of the Howard families (although she does not quite comprehend what that means), and asks him to give her a child by him before he leaves. Lazarus decides (by his own admission, rather coldly) that his own sense of self-love will not permit him to father, then abandon, a child, so instead he convinces Dora to marry him. A normal human lifetime, by this point, is a brief time for him, and he feels he can sacrifice that much time to make Dora happy. Because Lazarus cannot afford being recognized as a Howard, the two leave the settlement where they have been and pioneer a new settlement. They live alone with their children for a number of years before more settlers come along, and during this time and the years that follow, Lazarus discovers that he is truly in love with Dora—an emotion he has not experienced before. He remains with her for her entire life and is devastated when she dies.

Centuries later, Lazarus—now over two thousand years old—has grown weary of life and decides that it is time for him to die. He returns to Secundus, unaware that Ira Weatheral, Chairman Pro Tempore of the Howard Families, has been searching for him. (The title of "Chairman Pro Tempore" is a formality—under the traditional rules, Lazarus is the Chairman because of his status as "The Senior".) Just before he dies, he is grabbed by the police and subjected to rejuvenation. Ira explains to a very irate Lazarus that he has done so because he needs him. He believes that the society and culture of Secundus is in its death throes, and wants to do as Lazarus did—lead the families on a migration to a new planet, named Tertius. He wants Lazarus to impart as much wisdom as possible to assist him in the process. (This is where Time Enough for Love begins.)

Lazarus finally agrees, through a deal where Ira agrees to show up for "a thousand nights and a night" to listen to Lazarus' tales. If Ira fails to show up (with reasonable exceptions), Lazarus will commit suicide—what they refer to as a "Reverse Scheherazade gambit". Additionally, Ira orders a search to find what Lazarus desperately wants—something new. This search, using a "Zwicky Box", is performed by an artificial intelligence named Minerva. She handles most of the computer functions of the planetary government, is in love with Ira, and becomes friends with Lazarus. During one conversation, Lazarus refers to a "mythical time machine," and Minerva asks why he calls it "mythical." She notes that the current method of space travel could be modified for time travel. When Lazarus asks why she has not mentioned this as part of the search, she responds that she was looking for something new.

While Lazarus is going through the rejuvenation treatments, his caretakers, Hamadryad and Ishtar, both give birth to female clones of him, their Y chromosome being replaced by an identical copy of the X chromosome. The "daughters" are named Lapis Lazuli and Lorelei Lee.

Lazarus assists Ira in the migration to Tertius (although it is done as a private expedition rather than as a function of the Howard Foundation), and then plans a trip to Earth, circa 1919-1929. Due to a miscalculation, he arrives in 1916. He makes plans to avoid World War I by leaving the country, but continues his study of the time period. He looks up his first family, and manages to insinuate himself into that household under the name of "Ted Bronson." Due to his obvious family resemblance (and careful lies), his grandfather Ira says that he may be an illegitimate child of Ira's brother. (We later learn Ira suspects "Ted" is his own illegitimate son.) Ira, the grumpy and very dominant grandfather, bears a strong resemblance to "The Old Man" from Heinlein's much earlier The Puppet Masters. Long discovers, to his surprise and (initial) shame that he is overwhelmingly attracted to his own mother, Maureen.

Since Lazarus had not anticipated arriving this early, he had not researched the First World War in detail, and as a result the entry into it of the United States on April 6, 1917 catches him unawares. When his "adopted" family learns that he is not planning on joining the army to help in the fight, they spurn him. To regain their approval (and particularly that of Maureen), he enlists, although he intends to arrange it so that he is not sent into a combat zone by functioning as a drill sergeant. The family is enthusiastic. His father, Brian Smith—who is also in the Army as an officer—makes arrangements for him to go overseas, thinking he is doing "Ted" a favor.

As part of his final leave before deployment, Lazarus visits his family one more time, whereupon he learns that Maureen is as attracted to him as he is to her. She explains that her husband does not insist on fidelity, although she is careful not to become pregnant by any man but Brian. Since she is newly pregnant, that danger is gone, and she takes Lazarus discreetly to bed. (A previous attempt to get "Ted" alone for such purpose is (inadvertently and most frustratingly) interrupted by Maureen's son, Woody—who is of course Lazarus at five years old.) Once overseas, Lazarus is seriously wounded in combat, but is rescued and healed by his family arriving just in time from the future.

In The Number of the Beast, the main characters discover a way to travel to fictional worlds, and in the course of their explorations, visit the world of Lazarus Long. Using the technology of these characters' ship (which can teleport through space and time), Lazarus snatches his mother out of the time stream at the end of her life and replaces her with a dead clone. Lazarus also appears as a minor character in The Cat Who Walks Through Walls and plays a role in Heinlein's last novel, To Sail Beyond the Sunset, which is the life story of Maureen. In the latter novel, Maureen as narrator tells a somewhat different version of Lazarus' visit to Earth in 1916-8 and provides considerable detail on Lazarus' home timeline, including the fact that Lazarus (as Woodrow "Bill" Smith) was the backup pilot on the first Moon expedition.