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"Longevity Fiction."
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Surprise me : a novel
\"After being together for ten years, Sylvie and Dan have all the trimmings of a happy life and marriage; they have a comfortable home, fulfilling jobs, beautiful twin girls, and communicate so seamlessly, they finish each other's sentences. However, a trip to the doctor projects they will live another 68 years together and panic sets in. They never expected \"until death do us part\" to mean seven decades. In the name of marriage survival, they quickly concoct a plan to keep their relationship fresh and exciting: they will create little surprises for each other so that their (extended) years together will never become boring. But in their pursuit to execute Project Surprise Me, mishaps arise and secrets are uncovered that start to threaten the very foundation of their unshakable bond. When a scandal from the past is revealed that question some important untold truths, they begin to wonder if they ever really knew each other after all. With a colorful, eccentric cast of characters, razor-sharp observations, and her signature wit and charm, Sophie Kinsella crafts a humorous, yet thoughtful portrait of a marriage and shines a light on the danger of not looking past the many layers of the ones you love to discover how infinitely fascinating--and surprising--they truly are\"-- Provided by publisher.
Book
DNA as a digital information storage device: hope or hype?
The total digital information today amounts to 3.52 × 1022 bits globally, and at its consistent exponential rate of growth is expected to reach 3 × 1024 bits by 2040. Data storage density of silicon chips is limited, and magnetic tapes used to maintain large-scale permanent archives begin to deteriorate within 20 years. Since silicon has limited data storage ability and serious limitations, such as human health hazards and environmental pollution, researchers across the world are intently searching for an appropriate alternative. Deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) is an appealing option for such a purpose due to its endurance, a higher degree of compaction, and similarity to the sequential code of 0’s and 1’s as found in a computer. This emerging field of DNA as means of data storage has the potential to transform science fiction into reality, wherein a device that can fit in our palms can accommodate the information of the entire world, as latest research has revealed that just four grams of DNA could store the annual global digital information. DNA has all the properties to supersede the conventional hard disk, as it is capable of retaining ten times more data, has a thousandfold storage density, and consumes 108 times less power to store a similar amount of data. Although DNA has an enormous potential as a data storage device of the future, multiple bottlenecks such as exorbitant costs, excruciatingly slow writing and reading mechanisms, and vulnerability to mutations or errors need to be resolved. In this review, we have critically analyzed the emergence of DNA as a molecular storage device for the future, its ability to address the future digital data crunch, potential challenges in achieving this objective, various current industrial initiatives, and major breakthroughs.
Journal Article
Should We Aim to Create a Perfect Healthy Utopia? Discussions of Ethical Issues Surrounding the World of Project Itoh’s Harmony
To consider whether or not we should aim to create a perfect healthy utopia on Earth, we focus on the SF novel Harmony (2008), written by Japanese writer Project Ito, and analyze various issues in the world established in the novel from a bioethical standpoint. In the world depicted in Harmony, preserving health and life is a top priority. Super-medicine is realized through highly advanced medical technologies. Citizens in Harmony are required to strictly control themselves to achieve perfect health and must always disclose their health information to the public and continuously prove their health. From a bioethical standpoint, the world in Harmony is governed by a \"healthy longevity supremacy\" principle, with being healthy equated to being good and right. Privacy no longer exists, as it is perceived ethical for citizens to openly communicate health-related information to establish one's credibility. Moreover, there is no room for self-determination concerning healthcare because medical interventions and care are completely routinized, automated, centralized, and instantly provided. This is a situation where the community exhibits extremely powerful and effective paternalism. One can argue that healthy longevity is highly preferred. But is it right to aim for a perfectly healthy society at all costs? Should we sacrifice freedom, privacy, vivid feelings, and personal dignity to achieve such a world? In our view, the answer is no, as this would require the loss of many essential values. We conclude by proposing an alternative governing principle for future healthcare, and refer to it as the \"do-everything-in-moderation\" principle.
Journal Article
Altered Mortality: Why the Quest for Immortality is Regaining Visibility in the Media
Media carry the message of the scientific community into the wider world, though sometimes it would be more appropriate to say: of a certain scientific group. For the field of bioethics, this is particularly true. From films such as Gattaca to TV series like Black Mirror, the relationship between science and science fiction appears evidently bidirectional. This relationship is not new of course, but this paper discusses quasi-science-fictional experiments such as that of Sergio Canavero and the recent TV series Altered Carbon through the lenses of the philosophical background they both rely on: immortality is achievable—and it should be sought with vehemence. At least by the rich.
Journal Article
\THE TYRANNY OF AGE\: GODWIN'S \ST. LEON\ AND THE NINETEENTH-CENTURY LONGEVITY NARRATIVE
This essay reads William Godwin's novel St. Leon (1799) in relation to contemporaneous medicalizing discourses concerned with the elimination of old age. I argue that in St. Leon, a speculative case study of a disastrously unbounded life, Godwin recants his earlier paean to immortality in Enquiry Concerning Political Justice (1793-98) by undermining the solitary subject for whom senescence is a symptom of political tyranny. St. Leon therefore signals an acute transitional moment between late eighteenth-century thought and incipient Romanticism, and marks the first example of the nineteenth-century longevity narrative, wherein the finitude of individual lifespan exists in strained reciprocity with the perpetual succession of species.
Journal Article
Fierce with Reality
The anthology is far more culturally diverse than the few other literary collections on aging.Ranging from ancient Chinese poetry to Mary Oliver, Alice Walker, and Willie Nelson, the anthology includes poetry, fiction, philosophical essays, personal essays, humor, analyses of ageism, and folktales from Asia and Iraq.
eBook
Notes Toward a Supreme Fiction: Shakespeare at 400
The year 2016 is the 400
th
anniversary of Shakespeare’s death. His plays are read, interpreted, and performed throughout the United States and the world, and from the early seventeenth century onward, the praise bestowed on him is hyperbolic, as if he were superhuman, even divine. Biographies of Shakespeare abound and often are informative, but not about Shakespeare himself, for we know very little about his day to day activity. Biographers thus imagine and invent the life, using speculation and conjecture as substitutes for evidence and fact. We do know much about the Elizabethan and Jacobean theater and about London acting companies. We know too that for his company, Shakespeare was an actor and a sharer (an investor who shared in the profits) as well as a playwright. But none of the original scripts that Shakespeare wrote or co-wrote has survived. There are no manuscripts in Shakespeare’s hand, nor did he prepare and authenticate any of the published texts we possess. Hence we do not know for certain what the world’s greatest writer actually wrote. Shakespeare’s plays are a supreme fiction, and this more than anything explains his astonishing longevity and renown.
Journal Article
The Plum in the Golden Vase or, Chin P'ing Mei
In this third volume of a planned five-volume series, David Roy provides a complete and annotated translation of the famousChin P'ing Mei, an anonymous sixteenth-century Chinese novel that focuses on the domestic life of His-men Ch'ing, a corrupt, upwardly mobile merchant who maintains a harem of six wives and concubines. This work, known primarily for its erotic realism, is also a landmark in the development of narrative art--not only from a specifically Chinese perspective but also in a world-historical context.
Written during the second half of the sixteenth century and first published in 1618,The Plum in the Golden Vaseis noted for its surprisingly modern technique. With the possible exception ofThe Tale of Genji(ca. 1010) andDon Quixote(1605, 1615), there is no earlier work of prose fiction of equal sophistication in world literature. Although its importance in the history of Chinese narrative has long been recognized, the technical virtuosity of the author, which is more reminiscent of the Dickens ofBleak House, the Joyce ofUlysses, or the Nabokov ofLolitathan anything in earlier Chinese fiction, has not yet received adequate recognition. This is partly because all of the existing European translations are either abridged or based on an inferior recension of the text. This translation and its annotation aim to faithfully represent and elucidate all the rhetorical features of the original in its most authentic form and thereby enable the Western reader to appreciate this Chinese masterpiece at its true worth.
Replete with convincing portrayals of the darker side of human nature, it should appeal to anyone interested in a compelling story, compellingly told.
eBook
Aging masculinity in the American novel
As each generation confronts aging and responds to its challenges, the literary community—ranging from Philip Roth to Jonathan Franzen—has provided nuanced and thoughtful depictions that transcend stereotypes of old men as feeble and broken individuals. Under the sage guidance of these authors—many facing old age themselves—older male characters have become increasingly prevalent in literary fiction.
In Aging Masculinity in the American Novel, Alex Hobbs turns the spotlight on matters related to later life by examining a broad range of works. Hobbs looks at novels not only by literary lions of the Baby Boom generation, but authors on the cusp of old age who anticipate its consequences. In addition to works by Jonathan Franzen, Paul Auster, and Ethan Canin, the author considers the perspectives of female writers, such as Marilynne Robinson, Anne Tyler, and Jane Smiley, who have created complex older male characters. Hobbs argues that previous studies regarding male aging in popular culture have been reductive, and she suggests that male and female experiences and interpretations of aging are individualistic and unique.
With a bold argument for how readers should contemplate masculinity in literary fiction, this book helps us better understand the full range of issues that older men face—from legacy and loss to health issues and grace. The author's illuminating and persuasive perspectives will ignite a new way of thinking about this subject and its central place in the national conversation. Looking at how older men's lives are documented in American fiction, Aging Masculinity in the American Novel will be of interest to scholars and students of popular culture, gender studies, aging studies, and literature.
eBook