SciFi Idea: What do you think about very long lifespans?

[AllanR]

Clark's novel The City and The Stars had effective immortality. There was one large constraint however, humanity was limited to a single city. People would live for a thousand or two years, then edit their memories and digitally store them, and would be reborn some random time in the future (hundreds of thousands to millions of years, all of humanity had to have their share of time) When reborn, the memories would slowly come back at puberty. This cycle had been going on for time frames of hundreds of millions to billions of years.
The story was about someone who had never been born before.

 

[Dr Wu]

The novel is something of a dystopia as I recall. A fine read in Clarke's earlier literary style, apropos Childhood's End.

As for immortality for mere mortals, why yes, bring it on, good health permitting. The cosmos is so big and there's so much to be done. . .