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RatMan29's avatar

Larry Niven, I think in "Playgrounds of the Mind", did a story with the "Childhood Innocence" idea as a background plot. The world where it took place left the parents in control of the process as long as the child remained an adolescent. Some kids appeared fine with it; others resented it. I'm sorry I've forgotten the name of the story.

Meanwhile his "The Jigsaw Man" (published 1966 in Ellison's "Dangerous Visions" has mostly come true, in China. In the real one belonging to the wrong religion is enough to get your organs harvested.

Vernor Vinge explores the use and misuse of stasis boxes in "Marooned in Realtime" and "A Deepness in the Sky."

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Well-Ordered's avatar

Larry Niven must have used this more than once, because he uses it in "A World Out of Time." (Many of his stories are set in his "Known Space" universe; it's possible that those in "A World Out of Time" are intended as far-future versions of those that appear in the story you remember.) That novel has a post-apocalyptic Earth three million years hence in which bands of perpetually prepubescent (and thus immortal) youth are some of the only surviving inhabitants.

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Kevin's avatar

Regarding "How to Live Much Longer," this was a key plot point in the movie Inception:

Yusuf: The compound we'll be using to share the dream creates a very clear connection between dreamers whilst actually accelerating brain function.

Cobb: In other words, it gives us more time on each level.

Yusuf: Brain function in the dream will be about 20 times normal. And when you enter a dream within that dream, the effect is compounded. It's three dreams, that's 10 hours times 20-

Arthur: Math was never my strong subject. How much time is that?

Cobb: It's a week, the first level down, six months the second level down, and the third level-

Ariadne: That's 10 years.

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Richard Shipe's avatar

"Deathbed Repentance" sounds a lot like Ken Liu's short story, Simulacrum.

https://www.lightspeedmagazine.com/fiction/simulacrum/

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Jim Ancona's avatar

Early in Neal Stephenson's The Diamond Age is a version of the Exit Exam scenario.

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Christian_Z_R's avatar

Jorge Louis Borges have some pretty good 'essays' which are reviews of imaginary novels about ideas he had which he didn't want to write out into an actual novel. This adds the extra layer of describing the imaginary author of the imaginary books.

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John Palmer's avatar

I’m guessing that at least a dozen or more of these will be completed using AI.

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