There have been several SciFi takes on this. Three stick out to me beyond Heinlein’s tales of Lazarus Long. These are Niven\u2019s Boosterspice in Known Space, Blish\u2019s antiagathics in the Cities In Flight, and Weber\u2019s Prolong in the Honorverse.<\/p>\n
My memory on Cities In Flight is poor, but I think the antiagathics were rare and kept only to the upper class so it has limited effect on it\u2019s society other than envy of the upper classes.<\/p>\n
In both Known Space and the Honorverse there is a tendency for careers to be MUCH longer. What would have been generational wealth tends to be personal wealth over time. Prolong gets you 200-300 years in very good shape.<\/p>\n
Boosterspice is unlimited, Louis Wu is celebrating his 200th birthday at the start of Ringworld and hangs around MUCH longer(potential spoiler for a 30-50 year old series \ud83d\ude42 ). There is a hint in a later Known Space story that, over time, Boosterspice also makes Humans VERY risk averse (though not quite Puppeteer risk averse).<\/p>\n
In the Honorverse Prolong also seems to extend the period of fertility so 100+ year old couples can be seen having children much later in life. I do not know about boosterspice.<\/p>\n
At the time of Ringworld, Earth is still run by the UN and the birthrights system, but little is said otherwise. That said Teela Brown had not yet had boosterspice when she (presumably 20 something) heads off to the Ringworld(again potential spoiler). This might suggest that although extending life the effect on fertility is either negative or irrelevant so reproduction is limited by the normal span of ~ 40 years.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
There have been several SciFi takes on this. Three stick out to me beyond Heinlein’s tales of Lazarus Long. These are Niven\u2019s Boosterspice in Known<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[241,1489,237,4,242,4833],"tags":[1596,5037,711,265],"class_list":["post-34899","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-book-reviews","category-guest-contributors","category-reviews","category-sff","category-sff-book-reviews","category-tregonsee","tag-guest-contributors","tag-longevity","tag-robert-a-heinlein","tag-science-fiction"],"yoast_head":"\n