obvious noob questions from a writer

[TheodoreBonn]

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.

My ides on this subject is that cryonics wouldn't be entirely successful in the early period, in that the early adopters could not be thawed out perfectly. However some of these very early corpsicles could be used to create a 'statistical reconstruction' of the original person, allowing the people of the later eras to create a convincing emulation of the original. This is not the same as a full neurotechnological copy or upload, as not all the data will have survived, but the resulting emulation would probably think e was the original, or as close as possible under the circumstances.

I think the most favourable result of early cryogenic reanimation would be a kind of zombie, inhabited by an entity that thinks e is the original, but requires to be linked to some sort of prosthetic neurotech just to function. Some, most, or nearly all of the personality would be a 'best guess' reconstruction, much of which would be housed in this prosthetic substrate in the initial stages. Gradually this personality could transfer itself into the reconstituted brain, which would hopefully be plastic enough to accept this transfer. Eventually the reconstructed individual might be able to function without the prosthetics, or perhaps the prosthetics would become completely integrated with the individual's mind and body.

We do have some examples of personalities from the Information Age surviving into the latter period of the scenario; these are described as surviving through 'partial uploads' and emulations, and one route that could enable this sort of partial survival is cryonic preservation.

Hmm. I actually had some of the same thoughts...mainly, that these colonists were going to be considered to be damaged goods...from a product that was less than desirable to BEGIN with (that being, poorly-educated baseline humans from a crude and barbaric age, meaning, ours.) In my story I had that the chemical process had damaged a lot of cells, meaning, these colonists were going to need a LOT of medical reconstruction...but reading through the EG, apparently to stay in canon, reconstructing them physically would be the least of the problems. So...having them have incomplete mentalities that must be reconstructed...that's interesting. (I'm remembering the case of Pham Nuwen from A Fire Upon the Deep, after Old One puts him back together again...as best as the Power could, anyhow. Pham had a lot of gaps in his memory.)

Looking through the EG - some of which, it looks like, you yourself wrote! - I see that early star voyages were done by long-lived supers because cryo wasn't reliable. Also looks like Anders Sandberg did touch on the subject of freezing, but that corpsicles weren't retrievable...in the early Interplanetary Age, anyhow.

Think I can work within this, though. Again...very much appreciate the input.