Jeremy X, W.E.B. Du Havel, prolong

So I was looking up whether Web got prolong and got here. As of To End in Fire (TEIF), his prolong "status" is unclear. TEIF confirmed that Saburo and Jeremy didn't receive prolong early enough.

IMHO, prolong has always been RFC's metaphor for the inequities in our health care systems. Economically strong star nations include it as part of comprehensive socialized medicine, poor and struggling star nations can't afford to allocate resources to it. It comes down to a question of how long you can afford to live, and whether society has an obligation to make it affordable to everyone.

RFC is also warning us that new technologies have a social cost. From the extended periods of awkward adolescence, to the slowdown in naval promotions, to relationships between prolong and non-prolong lovers (like Bernardus Van Dort's marriage), even advances that seem greatly beneficial will have unintended consequences.

Yes, there are probably a lot of slaves who weren't freed in time to get prolong, and a lot who were freed in time but could not access the therapy, either because of costs or because they were on planets that didn't have it widely available. Like everyone else, those who have prolong will face losing friends who don't. It's kind of like my having to deal with the loss of friends who refused to take precautions against COVID.

One of the great things about RFC's works is that they lead us to think about social issues.

dscott8 wrote: Like everyone else, those who have prolong will face losing friends who don't. It's kind of like my having to deal with the loss of friends who refused to take precautions against COVID.

One of the great things about RFC's works is that they lead us to think about social issues.

You probably could write a Honorverse side story of a planet in the mid 1800s where the Prolong therapies just became available and various religious groups and political minorities vocally reject them - and the later fallout as friends and families are ripped apart because of ill-informed decisions made 40 years earlier, and the societal effects of a fair portion of the workforce aging out while the majority soldier on.

Humanity will never change.

It makes you wonder, will insurance premiums be different if you don't have prolong - you are more likely to cost more medically, earlier, as you "prematurely" age compared to your compatriots. Will companies refuse to hire non-prolong individuals due to short work spans and higher medical costs/needs? The societal questions of having both in your mainstream society for multiple generations bring up a multitude of discussion points.

Theemile wrote:You probably could write a Honorverse side story of a planet in the mid 1800s where the Prolong therapies just became available and various religious groups and political minorities vocally reject them - and the later fallout as friends and families are ripped apart because of ill-informed decisions made 40 years earlier, and the societal effects of a fair portion of the workforce aging out while the majority soldier on.

Humanity will never change.

It makes you wonder, will insurance premiums be different if you don't have prolong - you are more likely to cost more medically, earlier, as you "prematurely" age compared to your compatriots. Will companies refuse to hire non-prolong individuals due to short work spans and higher medical costs/needs? The societal questions of having both in your mainstream society for multiple generations bring up a multitude of discussion points.

And they'll be shaking out in the Honorverse for a long time to come. Even in the most advanced societies prolong has been available for such a (generationally) short time (still under 100 years since its first introduction) that you still have some people around who pre-date its existence.

And it'll be another century or more before those first recipients start to die of old age. I figure the societal structures and expectations likely won't really adjust well into their long term forms until at least 50-100 years after that!


And so the background of how they deal with prolong in general isn't fully stable; so the effects of how they deal with people unwilling or unable to take the treatment would be atop that already unsettled situation. Though RFC said that (at least for the moment) many prolong recipients end up 'retiring' for a while and then often switch career fields when they reenter the workforce; so at this point a given company probably doesn't get much, if any, more years of work from of a prolong employee as from a non-prolong one; so at least that wouldn't seem to discourage them from hiring the non-prolong person. (However if a general prejudice against the un-prolonged ever arises... well, then that could start causing hiring discrimination despite having no economic basis for it)

Jonathan_S wrote:And they'll be shaking out in the Honorverse for a long time to come. Even in the most advanced societies prolong has been available for such a (generationally) short time (still under 100 years since its first introduction) that you still have some people around who pre-date its existence.

And it'll be another century or more before those first recipients start to die of old age. I figure the societal structures and expectations likely won't really adjust well into their long term forms until at least 50-100 years after that!


And so the background of how they deal with prolong in general isn't fully stable; so the effects of how they deal with people unwilling or unable to take the treatment would be atop that already unsettled situation. Though RFC said that (at least for the moment) many prolong recipients end up 'retiring' for a while and then often switch career fields when they reenter the workforce; so at this point a given company probably doesn't get much, if any, more years of work from of a prolong employee as from a non-prolong one; so at least that wouldn't seem to discourage them from hiring the non-prolong person. (However if a general prejudice against the un-prolonged ever arises... well, then that could start causing hiring discrimination despite having no economic basis for it)

I can't help but think of the movie GATTACA.

"I was conceived in the Riviera... Not the French Riviera, but the backseat of my parent's Buick Riviera..."

And the entire movie is the life of a person who suffers the effects of a natural conception, in a world full of those who have been genetically uplifted.

dscott8 wrote:One of the great things about RFC's works is that they lead us to think about social issues.

Wait, I thought the point of the Military Sci-Fi was to discuss politics. We certainly spend a lot of time in the halls of government in the SL, the SKM/SEM, Haven, even the poor Rembrandt Trade Union. With Call to Insurrection, we even got Andermani government -- though I'd really like to see it under Gustav XI Anderman too.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:

dscott8 wrote:One of the great things about RFC's works is that they lead us to think about social issues.

Wait, I thought the point of the Military Sci-Fi was to discuss politics. We certainly spend a lot of time in the halls of government in the SL, the SKM/SEM, Haven, even the poor Rembrandt Trade Union. With Call to Insurrection, we even got Andermani government -- though I'd really like to see it under Gustav XI Anderman too.

"The personal is political." -- Carol Hamisch

A lot of sci-fi does spend time on politics, but not everyone analyzes its effect on individual lives like RFC does. Ask Helen Boltitz, or Travis Long, or Shannon Foraker, or any of the other characters whose personal lives become political footballs -- including one Honor Harrington.

What impact will Oyster Bay have on Manticore's ability to provide Prolong to the new member systems to the Empire.....Talbot to start with but Silesia? It's not even the amount of credits they will have to spend, it's about how and where they will produce, let alone ship the treatments. If all of the treatments were manufactured (start to finish from mfg of components to the drugs to manufacture of end product).
It is possible that along with having ramped up production prior to OB (and not loosing most of that in OB) that Manticore had started producing the equipment and training both for production and application of Prolong to install production facilities on at least a few systems in the new locations. This is always a time-sensitive product as there is a cut off date/age.
Not much in the consumer side of the effects of OB on MBS have surfaces though there has been a bunch about the military supplies.

Brigade XO wrote:What impact will Oyster Bay have on Manticore's ability to provide Prolong to the new member systems to the Empire.....Talbot to start with but Silesia? It's not even the amount of credits they will have to spend, it's about how and where they will produce, let alone ship the treatments. If all of the treatments were manufactured (start to finish from mfg of components to the drugs to manufacture of end product).
It is possible that along with having ramped up production prior to OB (and not loosing most of that in OB) that Manticore had started producing the equipment and training both for production and application of Prolong to install production facilities on at least a few systems in the new locations. This is always a time-sensitive product as there is a cut off date/age.
Not much in the consumer side of the effects of OB on MBS have surfaces though there has been a bunch about the military supplies.

I tend to suspect that biomedical production wouldn't be on the stations.

But even if it is Prolong is a pretty standard off the shelf bit of medical tech in the first world. Manticore could probably acquire enough from suppliers at their major trading partners to cover at least most of their time critical new citizens. Beowulf, Haven, the Andermani, the League, Erewhon, heck probably even Grayson at this point, would all have manufacturers of it. (And while Grayson also got hit by OB we know it focused on the yards at Blackbird; and there's no reason their prolong production would have been out there rather than planetside or in planetary orbit)

OB might (maybe even likely will) cause enough delay to increase the number of people who age out of eligibility before they can begin the prolong treatment - but I'd be thinking months; not years. So it probably doesn't cause massive issues with getting most of those new citizens of the Star Empire their life extension treatments.