SF books with long-lived humans/aliens?

[luzula]

Can you think of SF books where there are long-lived humans/aliens who by reason of their long lives are better at overcoming the problems of short-term thinking? Problems I'm thinking of are things like "let's go on hunting this species for food, even though if we do, it'll go extinct", or "let's go on burning fossil fuels, even though if we do, it'll wreck the climate".

I guess another question is whether longer lives would necessarily make us wiser that way...we already do have long lives compared to lots of other organisms. No matter how long you make it (500 years?) there would still probably be even longer-term problems that this society would take a short-term approach to, on their terms. And even if you have a long life, you might still discount the future as opposed to the present.

KSR's Mars books do have lots of interesting thoughts about how a longer life changes you personally, and also changes society.

Comments

[philomytha]

Isn't this a thing in some of Asimov's books? It's been many years since I read them, but IIRC there's a contrast between the long-lived Spacers and the short-lived Earthers, though I think the balance is more the other way, showing the negative effects of long life. But as I say it's a very long time since I read them so I may be misremembering.

[james]

I've read stuff with long-lived characters, but none where the author really showed them being good at long-range planning/awareness.

But now I want to read it. :-)

[skygiants]

I feel like this miiiight be an element of Czerneda's Species Imperative trilogy but I could absolutely be making it up, it's been a minute since I read them. (But I'm intending to reread soon, so will report back!)

[chestnut_pod]

What immediately springs to mind for me is Le Guin's Ekumen, where it's not exactly long life, but the effects of relativity that permit the long-term thinking that appears in, say, The Word For World Is Forest, Left Hand, and others of the Hainish books. It sometimes feels kind of colonial, now I think of it, when there are less long-lived planets being managed in this way. I think there's a paper in there *muses*

You already mentioned Kim Stanley Robinson, but that concept also appears in a specifically ecological context in 2312 with Swan Er Hong, the MC. (Not that I exactly recommend that book on its merits, but there it is.)

Hm, also The Sparrow by Mary Doria Russell -- really leans into those colonial dynamics, that one!

And then the exact opposite of this is The Silmarillion :p

[hyarrowen]

Doris Lessing, Shikasta and follow-ups. That concentrates more on the fall of those civilisations, though; they only realise in retrospect that the "golden age" was better.

I was going to say Numenor, but tbh they were pretty short-sighted given their longevity. Like, cutting down all the forests in Numenor, then in Eriador. The irl British were were better at that, planting oaks for shipbuilding a couple of centuries down the line.

John Wyndham's "Trouble with Lichen" looks at the effect of an anti-ageing drug, and how that might change society, particularly women's roles.

Michael Scott Rohan's duergar in the Winter of the World series are portrayed as wise, technically advanced and able to withstand an Ice Age much better than modern humans. But you don't get much detail on that.

None of those are quite what you want, sorry!

[starshipfox]

Some of the stories about generation ships deal with this idea to an extent: for example, "The Dazzle of Day" by Molly Gloss, the novella "The Birthday of the World" by Ursula Le Guin, and "Marrow" by Robert Reed. However, I don't think any of those quite capture the idea of longevity leading to overcoming short-term thinking in quite the way you describe. It's an interesting concept!