Tricentenarian

He has grave doubts about the alleged longevity of the antediluvians, though apparently unaware that Prof. Owen has proved it to be inconsistent with physiological laws; but he is prepared to concede them a lifetime of more than two centuries, since, “according to Riley, Prince Puckler, and others,” that age is not uncommon in “the Arabian deserts of Africa” (p. 212). Perhaps the interior of the Antarctic continent may yield a crop of tricentenarians, since, according to Herodotus, the most wonderful things are generally found at the extremities of the earth.

The third, entitled “The Thing Happens,” deals with the discovery, three hundred years hence, of certain persons who are tricentenarians surviving from our own time.

It is clear that to live 300 years is desirable (the figure is round for the sake of convenience and because longer life would bore), but it is clear also that much hard and sustained thinking will be required from a number of people before a party of tricentenarians sufficiently numerous to be considerable politically can be giving its matured and considered vote to further the ends of the Life Force.

It took a long time — sometimes 10 or 15 years — for the fungus to kill a tree, especially if it were one of the patriarchs we have described. Even today, right in the vicinity of New York City, a very few of these bicentenarians or tricentenarians are desperately holding on to a thread of life.

A century from now, life spans of hundreds of years may be common. Learning pills will enable tricentenarians to change vocations at will, while genetic adjustments to increase intelligence will keep mankind a step ahead of computers—even if it means something as bizarre as transforming the appendix into an organic computer.

In their three-hundred-year spells of renewal, they do not even attain the widsom^([sic]) and earnestness of purpose that animate Shaw’s tricentenarians. The Makropoulos Secret, indeed, dramatizes the thought that we should be content with one life span as it is.