• @green_square
    link
    fedilink
    16611 months ago

    “You can’t afford it” Just take a loan, you’ve got all of eternity to pay it back

    • Chainweasel
      link
      fedilink
      English
      15911 months ago

      Yeah, I could see them making people work centuries to pay off the debt, or even worse, it only extends your life by a few years at a time and they turn it into a subscription service

      • Scrubbles
        link
        fedilink
        English
        57
        edit-2
        11 months ago

        Now you’re thinking with capitalism!

        Also similar concept, check out John Scalzi’s Old man’s war, follows that idea

        • @LarmyOfLone@lemm.ee
          link
          fedilink
          9
          edit-2
          11 months ago

          Fantastic hard sci-fi book series. And it didn’t focus on this one high concept but has lots of themes about humanity. PS: Apparently a TV series is under development!

          • @DragonTypeWyvern@literature.cafe
            link
            fedilink
            5
            edit-2
            11 months ago

            I never really understood why people called it similar to The Forever War.

            The “similar premise” is mostly just acknowledging that relativity is important to space travel.

            • @LarmyOfLone@lemm.ee
              link
              fedilink
              311 months ago

              Wait, Old Man’s War has FTL? Or was it important for in-system battles? I haven’t read them in a while.

              I recently red The Star Carrier Series by Ian Douglas and that has FTL and interesting hard-sci fi battles with relativity effects.

              I agree that the forever war is quite different in concept and style, much more esoterical.

              • OMW uses “skip drives” which are teleportation through multidimensional travel, time dilation is still a bit of a factor, but not nearly to the extent of The Forever War where it’s practically the whole idea (as far as the science in the sci-fi goes)

        • Flying Squid
          link
          fedilink
          411 months ago

          There’s also the terrific book, Immortality, Inc. by Robert Sheckley, a book I bought on a whim when killing time in a college bookstore with a tiny sci-fi section and have since recommended to many people who thanked me for the recommendation.

          The concept is that in the future, it is discovered that there is an afterlife, but only a very small number of people can get there naturally. So a medical procedure is developed that allows people to get to the afterlife. However, only the wealthy can afford it. Once their afterlife is guaranteed (things can go wrong, but that’s another issue), they do things like start hacking people to death in the streets to commit suicide-by-cop because what have they got to lose?

          https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immortality,_Inc.

        • @Alexstarfire@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          1711 months ago

          No. They transferred their mind to new bodies, called sleeves. They had laws against double sleeving, putting your mind into more than one body, cause that causes all sorts of issues. The tech was basically what you’re stopped to do for computers back up data and when something happens to the computer you put the same data on the new machine. The basic version was local storage called a stack that resided at the base of the neck. That’s why executions killed the person and the stack. The rich had offside backups as well.

          This is closer to In Time where the single body was kept alive and they used time to pay for things. The rich had thousands, probably much more, years stocked up. It’s been quite a while since I’ve seen it.

        • Decoy321
          link
          fedilink
          15
          edit-2
          11 months ago

          In a sense, but it’s a common cyberpunk theme. I remember an old movie called Repo Men with a similar premise, which was based off a pretty dope book, Repossession Mambo.

          Its essentially the same premise, but with loaning artificial organs.

        • Zoot
          link
          fedilink
          211 months ago

          I loved this movie as a kid. Its a little dated now, but still so good.

    • @De_Narm@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      611 months ago

      Only works for a one time payment, life as a subscription can’t be paid for with a loan. At least not forever.