Suspended animation in fiction
 | This suspended animation-related article describes works or elements in fiction in a primarily in-universe style. (March 2023) |
Suspended animation in fiction refers to the temporary cessation of life processes experienced by
Mechanisms
The methods employed for the suspension and subsequent revival of characters can vary greatly. In early stories, a general approach involves the use of magical enchantments that induce a prolonged slumber. In contrast, many modern narratives aim to present the concept as scientific suspended animation or cryonics, often simplifying and disregarding most of the intricacies involved. Within numerous science fiction settings, the challenges associated with contemporary cryonics are overcome prior to the development of faster-than-light travel, making it a viable means of interstellar transportation. In fictional renditions, the cells typically remain viable, and the revival process is depicted as straightforward or even spontaneous. Accidental freezing scenarios are prevalent in many stories, with technobabble utilized to rationalize how the characters managed to survive the process.
Terms
Various terms are employed to describe the state of suspended animation, including cryosleep, hypersleep, hibernation, and soma.
Corpsicle
The term "corpsicle" is utilized in science fiction to describe a deceased body that has been cryopreserved through cryonics. It is a combination of the words "corpse" and "popsicle."[1] The earliest known printed usage of this term in its current form can be traced back to science fiction author Frederik Pohl's book The Age of the Pussyfoot in 1969, where a corpsicle is depicted as "a zombie frozen in Alaska." An earlier variation of the term, "corpse-sicle," also credited to Pohl, appeared in the essay "Immortality Through Freezing," published in the August 1966 issue of Worlds of Tomorrow.[2][3] Author Larry Niven also employed the term in his 1971 short story "Rammer" and later expanded it into the novel A World Out of Time (1976). In Niven's work, the protagonist awakens in a society that denies any legal rights to corpsicles.[4] Ben Bova also incorporates the term in his 2001 novel The Precipice, where numerous subjects have been cryonically preserved, but upon revival, they have lost all their memories.[5] In cinema, the term appears in Paul W. S. Anderson's film Event Horizon (1997), although it is used to refer to frozen remains with no possibility of revival.[6]
Literature
Suspended animation often plays a role in stories about kings or heroes who are believed to be slumbering or kept alive until they are needed to confront great dangers. Examples include
In the fairy tale of Sleeping Beauty, an evil fairy places a curse on a princess, causing her to sleep for 100 years until she is awakened by a king's son. To ensure the princess does not wake up alone and frightened, the good fairy uses her wand to put everyone in the palace, including humans and animals, into a sleep state.
In American fiction, one of the earliest stories involving suspended animation is "Rip Van Winkle," a short story written by American author Washington Irving in 1819. The tale revolves around a British individual in the American colonies who stumbles upon fairies in the Catskill Mountains and consumes their moonshine. As a result, he falls into a 20-year slumber and awakens to find his village and country dramatically transformed due to the passage of time. This story has since become a prototype for narratives exploring social displacement.
Science fiction literature mentions
In the 19th century, notable science fiction short stories featuring suspended animation, both deliberate and accidental, include Mary Shelley's "Rodger Dodsworth: The Reanimated Englishman"[7] (written in 1826, published in 1863),[7] Edgar Allan Poe's "Some Words with a Mummy" (1845), and Lydia Maria Child's "Hilda Silfverling, A Fantasy" (1845).[8] Edward Bellamy's "Looking Backward" and Jack London's "A Thousand Deaths" (1899) also explore the theme.
Moving into the 20th century, science fiction stories featuring suspended animation include
The character of Buck Rogers was introduced in the August 1928 issue of Amazing Stories.[10] In the novella Armageddon 2419 A.D., Buck Rogers, a World War I veteran, becomes trapped in a mine and is preserved for 500 years by mine gases. This concept continued in the 1930s radio show Buck Rogers in the 25th Century [11] and subsequent film and television adaptations.
While many early stories depict unwilling subjects in suspended animation, Neil R. Jones' 1931 short story "The Jameson Satellite" explores deliberate cryopreservation after death,[12] laying the groundwork for the concept of cryonics.[13] Arthur C. Clarke incorporates suspended animation in works such as Childhood's End (1953), The Songs of Distant Earth (1986), and the Space Odyssey series (1968–1997) to enable interstellar travel. In Clarke's 3001: The Final Odyssey, the character Frank Poole is cryopreserved in space and revived a thousand years later.
In 1964, Captain America, a comic book superhero popular in the 1940s, was reintroduced, explaining his absence by accidentally freezing in the Arctic ice pack.[14]
Frederik Pohl's science fiction work The Age of the Pussyfoot (1966–1969) tells the story of a man revived from cryopreservation in the year 2527, having died in a fire 500 years earlier.
Although relatively few stories explore cryonics for medical time travel, Edgar Allan Poe's mentioned story (1845) includes a mummy, mentioning the use of mummification for time travel in Egyptian civilization.
James L. Halperin's national best-seller The First Immortal (1998) delves deeply into cryonics in a contemporary setting. Giles Milton's thriller The Perfect Corpse (2014) is set in a fictional cryonics laboratory and revolves around the resurrection of a perfectly frozen body found in the Greenland ice sheet.
Film
Movies featuring suspended animation include Late for Dinner (1991), Forever Young (1992), Demolition Man (1993), Idiocracy (2006), Realive (2016), Sexmission (1984), the Woody Allen comedy Sleeper (1973), and Open Your Eyes (Abre los Ojos) (1997), which was remade as Vanilla Sky (2001).
The 1939 movie serial
The 1984 film Iceman revolves around a prehistoric man who is revived after being frozen for 40,000 years, while the 1992 film Encino Man uses a comedic approach to the same concept. Both movies depict prehistoric individuals being naturally flash-frozen without any special preparation and thawing without lasting damage to their physical or mental abilities. In Iceman, scientists theorize that something in the caveman's diet acted as a natural antifreeze, preventing cell crystallization.
Suspended animation, referred to as "cryosleep," "hypersleep," or "hibernation," is used during space travel in films such as
In The Empire Strikes Back (1980), Han Solo is temporarily frozen to demonstrate the concept of suspension, which serves as a means of restraining prisoners for travel.
The
In the
In the 1943
Television
On television, suspended animation has been featured in various shows since the 1960s. In the original Twilight Zone episode "The Rip Van Winkle Caper" (1961), a band of thieves utilizes suspended animation. The concept is prominently showcased in the opening episode of the 1965 space adventure series Lost in Space, where a family of space travelers undergoes suspended animation for a five and a half-year journey to the star Alpha Centauri. The original Star Trek series episode "Space Seed" (1967) involves the discovery of 72 humans adrift in space, preserved in a state of suspended animation, led by Khan Noonien Singh, portrayed by Ricardo Montalbán. Khan's character returns in the 1982 film Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, and a similar storyline is used in Star Trek Into Darkness (2013), with Benedict Cumberbatch as Khan. The 1970s television series Buck Rogers changed the origin story of its main character, depicting him as an astronaut frozen during a deep space mission for 500 years due to a life support system failure.[16]
The 1973 TV movie Genesis II, created by Gene Roddenberry, shares a similar premise with Buck Rogers. It follows the story of (fictional) NASA scientist Dylan Hunt, who volunteers for a suspended animation test but awakens in the year 2133 after an earthquake traps him underground. He emerges into a post-apocalyptic world.
In TV shows such as L.A. Law (1990),[17] Picket Fences (1994),[18] and Boston Legal (2005),[19] producer David E. Kelley presents well-researched portrayals of cryonics. These shows depict dying individuals seeking the right to elective cryopreservation before death. Cryonics is also featured in an episode of Castle titled "Head Case," where the investigation is complicated by a cryonics company recovering the murder victim's body before the police can examine it.
In the
In Star Trek: Voyager, the crew encounters aliens who placed themselves in suspended animation to escape a solar flare in the episode "The Thaw" (1996). In the episode "One," the Voyager crew enters stasis pods to survive a radiation-filled nebula, while in "Dragon's Teeth" (1999), the crew revives a warlike alien race, the Vaadwaur, 900 years after their suspension.
The 1999 South Park episode "Prehistoric Ice Man" mocks the difficulties of adjusting to the future by depicting a man who was frozen for 32 months but struggles to adapt to the changes in fashion and music. Another South Park episode features Cartman freezing himself to wait for the release of the Nintendo Wii, only to end up far in the future.
In
The season finale for the first season of
In the TV sitcom Mr. Meaty episode "Original Sin," the founder of the Mr. Meaty food chain cryogenically freezes himself in 1904 to continue his domination plan in the future. He is later thawed out by Josh and Parker, the show's protagonists.
In the TV series The 100, during season 5, a group of prisoners is awakened from cryopreservation after over 100 years. They had been in suspended animation while Earth was temporarily uninhabitable, serving their sentences aboard a ship mining asteroids. Later, earthlings used cryopreservation to survive after an explosion destroyed the only habitable land on Earth. In the end of the fifth season, they find out that Earth didn't recover fast enough so instead they have been in the cryopreservation for 125 years and have travelled to another planet.
Manga and anime
In the anime series
In the manga/anime
In the spinoff series
Video games
Suspended animation is a recurring concept in various video games. For example, in the Halo series, it is used to prevent aging during long interstellar voyages.
In the Portal series, the protagonist named Chell wakes up from suspended animation.
Fallout 4 features the main protagonist, known as the Sole Survivor, who undergoes suspended animation through cryosleep as part of a Vault-Tec experiment in Vault 111.
In Mass Effect: Andromeda, the main protagonist, Pathfinder Ryder, along with other passengers on arks, are placed in cryosleep for a 600-year journey to colonize the Andromeda Galaxy.
The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild revolves around the main protagonist, Link, who awakens from a century-long stasis without memories. This occurs after sustaining fatal injuries during the Great Calamity and being brought to the Shrine of Resurrection for healing. Princess Zelda, in the form of a disembodied voice, guides Link on his quest to regain his memories and defeat Calamity Ganon.
In the upcoming seventh installment of the Dead or Alive game series, fighters from books are said to be in frozen sleep and suspended animation for many years until they are revived in the present day.[citation needed]
The Outer Worlds features a main protagonist who is a space colonist placed in suspended animation during transportation to the Halcyon Colony. Due to unforeseen circumstances, the journey takes 70 years instead of the intended 10 years. The colony's scientists are unable to unfreeze the colonists due to their extended time in suspended animation. Resuscitation efforts by a rogue scientist aim to disrupt the control of the Halcyon Holdings Company and save the other colonists trapped in suspended animation.
Kirby and the Forgotten Land features an alien life-form dubbed specimen ID-F86 held in suspended animation within the Eternal Capsule at Lab Discovera after it was captured by the research team and an accident occurred that resulted in the alien splitting in two. One half, Fecto Forgo, was the one kept within the capsule while the other, Elfilin, escaped.
Perfect Dark in its final mission, Battle Shrine, the protagonist, Joanna Dark, recognizes that the Skedar aliens are in a state of suspended animation, and must be killed as a part of an objective.[21]
In the Sonic the Hedgehog series, Shadow the Hedgehog is placed into suspended animation after being deemed as a threat by a military organization named the Guardian Units of Nations (G.U.N.). Fifty years later, during the events of Sonic Adventure 2, he is liberated from his stasis capsule by Doctor Eggman.
Music
Suspended animation and cryonics can sometimes play into music, typically in
- The US Slayer has a song titled "Crionics" from their Show No Mercyalbum.
- The Austrian death metal band Pungent Stench has a song titled "Suspended Animation" from their For God Your Soul... For Me Your Flesh album.
See also
References
- ISBN 978-0-246-11020-6.
- ^ Science Fiction Citations Database for the Oxford English Dictionary
- ^ Internet Speculative Fiction Database
- ISBN 0-415-12626-6.
- ISBN 978-0-312-84876-7.
- ^ Lacey, Liam (1997-08-18). "Event Horizon (1997)". The Globe and Mail. Bell Globemedia Publishing. Retrieved 2008-12-17. [dead link]
- ^ ISBN 9781476675046.
- ISBN 978-1-933747-49-1.
- ^ ""Клоп" за 5 минут. Краткое содержание комедии Маяковского".
- ISBN 0879728213(p.120)
- ^ Vincent Terrace, Radio Program Openings and Closings, 1931-1972 (2003), p. 36: "Science fiction adventure about Buck Rogers, a 20th Century man held in suspended animation (by leaking gas in a mine) who awakens 500 years later".
- ^ Neil R. Jones (July 1931). "The Jameson Satellite". Amazing Stories. Retrieved 2010-03-14.
- ISBN 0-201-56751-2.
- ^ Lee, Stan (w), Kirby, Jack (p), Roussos, George (i). "Captain America Joins... The Avengers!" The Avengers, vol. 1, no. 4 (March 1964). Marvel Comics.
- ^ Nugent, John. "Movie plots explained: Interstellar". Empire.
- ^ Tim Brooks, Earle Marsh, The Complete Directory to Prime Time Network and Cable TV Shows (1995), p. 143.
- IMDb
- IMDb
- IMDb
- Paste Magazine. Retrieved October 21, 2020.
- ^ https://www.giantbomb.com/joanna-dark/3005-939/
Further reading
- ISBN 978-0-415-97460-8.