obvious noob questions from a writer

[Drashner1]

One thing I would argue until I'm blue in the face, though, is that it isn't going to be until the 2300's before at least a crude form of cryo gets trendy.

Actually, cryonics is a small but going concern already. Has been since the 70s or 80s or earlier IIRC. Our issue isn't with cryonics/biostasis per se, its with the notion that anything viable could be produced from current methods. Freezing does awful things to cells (even with the protective techniques we use now) and getting anything more than a vegetable from our current state-of-art seems highly iffy at best. The 2300s are when we currently predict (for setting purposes) that vitrification biostasis is developed. Less advanced cryonic techs may come earlier but I would very much doubt they would come in the next few decades.

As far as death being a growing business...in OA we presume that functional immortality is eventually perfected as well as resurrection technology (of a sort). There is still death of course, but rather a lot less of it That's rather farther in the future than what we're considering here, however.

As the tech gets cheaper...it's also not hard to imagine that overpopulated nations might not look to cryo tech as a solution for relieving population pressure, or as a much more cost-effective way of detaining criminals without having to feed and house them.

Earth's population was at 22 billion just before the Nanodisaster. Although the tech of the time made that no big deal to maintain (there were other issues going on, but it's...complicated).

As far as earlier eras having population issues and turning to cryonics to alleviate them...I've seen the notion before but I'm not sure that I find it a likely solution. If for no other reason than that a society so on the edge that it would freeze people, might then go on to deciding that it would be even cheaper to just let them thaw in an uncontrolled manner (oops) to avoid having to continue to maintain them.

At a thought...could these mass freezers be incorporated somehow into the canon...and maybe tied into the Expulsion? Might make sense for GAIA - or whatever caretaker AI came to be responsible for these mass frozen graveyards - to launch them at the Hyades, too...lots of worlds, lots of chances, as opposed to just spewing the frozen deaders out in random directions and hoping some of them stick wherever they wind up.

GAIA doesn't seem to have cared much about what happened to the people she kicked off the planet, although she did create the ark ships to help get them out of the solar system...although She might have arranged to remove any cryonic sleepers since they couldn't remove themselves (whether any would be around in the past might be problematical, but possible I suppose). Or maybe the people running whatever future version of the cyronics facilities was in existence at the time did it. Hmm.

Thinking about this, I would agree with Steven's suggestion that any revived sleepers from this period might be more the product of someone's imagination than the original people themselves. Which doesn't mean that couldn't be the case - Maybe some sort of rush revival and reconstruction job was done on them during the Expulsion years and then they were put back in stasis (using the better tech of the day) and sent off into space.

Although there is perhaps another possibility...you may remember I mentioned some 'stranger' options being possible in this scenario.

Obviously I don't know how your story is structured right now, but I wouldn't be surprised if it was mainly told from the pov of the newly revived sleepers. Which makes things interesting, since presumably all of their memories and cultural references and such come from them and are based on their memories. It's possible to play with that.

Imagine that the sleepers (or a subset of them I assume), wake as they are approaching the Hyades or a system in it. Their memories are from some point early in the timeline (probably more than a few decades from now, but not 500yrs in the future either), but they don't know how they got on this ship nor is there any record of their ship ever leaving Sol system (although records from this period are spotty). Did we mention that higher level transapients can think new beings into existence, complete with memories and culture and everything else with trivial effort?

Basically, the Hyades civ might be very worried that this ship of lost strangers is some sort of transapient trick or trap or covert attack. So they are likely to be very suspicious. At the same time, their culture shies away from just blowing the ship out of the sky, especially if it is actually refugees from Sol. Different factions might have different views on this and much debate and merriment could then ensue...Ultimately, the backstory of how the sleepers got there could be a mystery for them and everyone else for most (maybe even all) of the story. Even if revealed to be transapient constructs or reconstructions, by the end, will that really change how they act during most of the story?

Or something like that. Do any of these options lend themselves to the story? Obviously I haven't read it so I'm sort of just brainstorming here at the moment. As we have more info, other options might suggest themselves. To go back to your original question, we may be able to incorporate the idea of frozen people, but it may require some tweaking of the idea itself as well. When do you imagine these people get frozen exactly?

Thoughts?

Todd

P.S.: Thanks for the compliment but we actually really enjoy these sorts of discussions. This kind of thing can result in making the setting richer and more fun all around. Thank you for sharing your ideas with us.