The Sword and Laser discussion

Hi,

I'd be interested in reading a story about cryogenics gone wrong.

I've got lots of examples of colonists lost in space, but I beat you know some without the oversleeping trope.

Does anyone have any suggestions?



Thanks,
Scott

This may or may not be exactly what you're looking for, but I love Love Minus Eighty. It's a romance story set on a dystopian Earth and exploring a potential dark side of cryogenics.

Definitely: Tomorrow and Tomorrow by Charles Sheffield. (Cryosleep is the point.)

Maybe: We Are Legion (We Are Bob) by Dennis Taylor. (Cryosleep is just the hook.)

Movies:

Sleeper
Idiocracy
Passengers
Forever Young
Demolition Man

Took me a while to remember this one: Warrior by Donald McQuinn. I recall enjoying this book, but it takes awhile before the cryo part shows up.

I second We Are Legion (We Are Bob)! Such a great series.

Aurora Rising also matches (if you like YA). Oh wait, there is some oversleeping due to an accident, so maybe not this one.

The book , Lockstep by Karl Schroeder.
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00H6E6ATI/...

There seems to be a few tropes out there

- Human Popsicle
- CryoPrison
- Fish out of temporal water
- Sleeper starship

Usually these are the inciting incident or the plot device to bridge the years without having to write about it.

Tomorrow and Tomorrow seems outside of that with since it's essentially using cryogenics as a way to create immortality.

Great suggestions, my long backlog has gotten longer

Tomorrow and Tomorrow has cryogenics that go wrong. It’s an expansion of a short story in the collection Far Futures.

The Door Into Summer by Robert Heinlein

Another trope is the audience representative. I see that in games (The Outer Worlds) where someone is pulled from cryo without memories or at least a backstory.

- A Fire Upon the Deep

Another is the temporal shift workers

- Shift (Silo series)

I know of a series that involves cryogenics in a scary dangerous post apocalyptic world, but that is the major twist you find out later in the first novel of the trilogy. Early on you are led to believe you are in rural idyllic America, present day.

The book series, if you don't mind that I spoiled the major twist:
(view spoiler)[The Wayward Pines trilogy starting with Pines by Blake Crouch (hide spoiler)]

Chasm City by Alastair Reynolds uses cryogenics with so, so many twists.

Cryogenics is a common feature of his books, but in this one (which can be read as a stand-alone) it plays a key role. Avoid spoilers!

Cryogenics also plays a very different role in Reaper by Janet Edwards facilitating full immersion in cyberspace. Of course things don't go to plan in this detective/mystery style plot, though with less of the normal cyberpunk noir and more of a kind of fun/heroic feel.

I would suggest


Ubik by Philip K. Dick

Get the spray-on variety if possible.

"A Deepness In The Sky" is full of cryogenic space travel and a very good story. This is the prequel to "A Fire Upon the Deep" (a S&L book a few years ago). Not really a cryogenics-gone-wrong, but as everyday normal usage. It only goes wrong in the gap between those two novels.

Keith wrote: ""A Deepness In The Sky" ..."

An excellent example - the plot and the setting are explorations of how cryogenics could facilitate and alter our perceptions/societies.

Brilliant book in general imho.