Comments on: Cryonics “Castle”

By: Taurus Londono

Taurus Londono — Tue, 31 Jul 2012 00:13:52 +0000

Bah. Forget that crap-fest.
The actual comics (or the excellent animated series from the 1990′s) offer a better (deeper) portrayal of Mr. Freeze (Dr. Victor Fries)… He’s been fascinated by freezing organisms ever since childhood when he engaged in experiments on animals; his behavior is dismissed as pathological and he grows up feeling alienated. The only one who understands him is his wife, Nora (who subsequently contracts some kind of illness, if I remember correctly). He’s driven by fundamentally good intentions- a powerful love of his wife; a refusal to allow her to die. However, he’s willing to do *anything* to keep her safely cryopreserved and to find a way to bring her back into a state of health. Think Mike Darwin in a space suit.

By: Mitchell Porter

Mitchell Porter — Fri, 23 Dec 2011 06:07:08 +0000

I was always intrigued that the 1997 film “Batman and Robin” (with Arnie as “Mr Freeze”) had a mildly positive attitude towards cryonics. Schwarzenegger’s character is a scientist who has suspended his wife, hoping to find a cure for her cancer; later, he goes mad and homicidal. Usually, the restoration of justice and order to the world that comes at the end of that story, would have included unplugging the cryo-suspended wife, ending the doomed unnatural attempt to meddle with the cycle of life and death, and a lecture about how one shouldn’t deny loss, but should rather move on and embrace the flow, etc. But in this story, when Mr Freeze comes to his senses, he’s allowed to go back to his work of trying to cure and revive his wife (albeit, he’ll be doing it from a cell in Arkham Asylum shared with Uma Thurman). Alas for the movie’s potential status as a small propaganda win for cryonics, it was widely considered trash, and did badly enough to end that particular cycle of Batman films…

By: Mark Plus

Mark Plus — Wed, 12 Oct 2011 04:49:39 +0000

I just watched it on my iPad. The cryonics organization received more respectful treatment from law enforcement than we’ve seen in real life, and the episode didn’t mock the cryonics idea or portray cryonicists as misfits, cranks or kooks – and it especially went out of its way to show a sympathetic, non hostile cryonicist wife. I’d give it a B as cryonics propaganda.

But I agree that it presents an unrealistic view of American police procedures, especially the part about having a mediocre crime novelist as a participant in a homicide investigation.

By: Fundie

Fundie — Mon, 10 Oct 2011 17:17:37 +0000

A word of thanks for the positive portrayal, if nothing else. :)

By: Fundie

Fundie — Mon, 10 Oct 2011 17:17:18 +0000

Nathan Fillion is on Twitter. It might be interesting to see some cryonicists talk to him about cryonics.

By: Shannon Vyff

Shannon Vyff — Sun, 09 Oct 2011 18:50:04 +0000

I suppose I won’t even ask if you are for or against voluntary euthanasia ;) I lived in OR at the time Assisted Suicide was passed, and was one of the ones who voted for it :)

I liked the episode and thought the token bad guy could have been made out to be a lot more crazy than she was :)

My 12 yr-old son loves Futurama, he likes the cryonics references and jokes in it, even the out-there over-the-top ones. I doubt many people would look up actual cryonics after viewing Futurama. Even though I don’t think many would, I suspect a few did after watching this Castle episode.

By: gwern

gwern — Sun, 09 Oct 2011 16:13:46 +0000

I watched the episode last night; I thought it was pretty good and much more favorable to cryonics than most media. The only way cryonics comes off badly is that the true-believer wife is a cuckoo murderer; but, then *someone* has to be a bad guy or else there’s no plot.

If you want a more favorable or accurate depiction, there’s nowhere else but the ghetto of hard SF novels/shorts. At the very least, it’s way better than say _Futurama_!

By: unperson

unperson — Sun, 09 Oct 2011 02:07:32 +0000

shannon wrote:
“I also bristled at that point, as if he wanted euthanasia I only support voluntary cases….”

You only support voluntary euthanasia?! Well, I don’t know if we can be friends anymore.

But anyway, I thought this Castle episode was substandard insofar as cryonics was concerned. The show should have focused on nano issues and qualia issues and uploading issues, like all the great posts on New Cryonet.

By: Mark Plus

Mark Plus — Sat, 08 Oct 2011 14:52:33 +0000

We should also pay attention to progress in organ printing. Eventually tissue engineers could print a whole human body from the neck down.

In fact, I’d like to see if the organizers of the next cryonics conference can invite a scientist or two to speak about this field. I would much rather hear from one of them than sit through more “cryonics theater” about imaginary nanomedicine.

By: admin

admin — Sat, 08 Oct 2011 02:05:44 +0000

Yes! Definitely worth adding and I’m embarrassed to see that I forgot to do it. Thank you very much for pointing this out. To go ever further, in all probability cloning, per se, with all its attendant legal, moral and ethical issues will not be necessary. The biological programming which results in the production of an entire new individual is even now being “edited” so that single organs, or even simpler tissues, can be grown in the lab for therapeutic purposes. It is just as possible to edit this programming to produce a healthy, fully gown body that is a biological “duplicate” of the patient’s own (young) body – but without a brain. This actually happens naturally as infrequent birth defect in both in humans and animals called anencephalia. Such “infants” are born “brain dead” which is two words for being dead, instead of one. Gestation in the womb to a size and mass far greater than that of an adult human with the ability to stand, walk (or swim) and communicate immediately after birth is a commonplace in the natural world: newborn elephants, whales, and giraffes are some examples of this. Anything we see happening in the natural, biological world that is closely analogous to a process we want to engineer, such as growing a human body from a single cell to full adulthood starting with the repaired and rejuvenated brain of the patient in situ, there is an excellent chance that we will be able to do it. — Mike Darwin