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

[chestnut_pod]

Maybe it’s only Finwë’s extended family who are so aggressively shortsighted! Although I suppose after two Ages of the World the ones who are left do learn to have a bit of perspective.

That’s very cool about the forester surviving all those hundreds of years — the thought of the quality of record-keeping required is delightful!

[luzula]

Hee, yeah, the Fëanorians do make bad decisions! I guess I was thinking more along the lines of the elves having a stable population and not depleting their resource base, which they don't seem to have a problem with.

[chestnut_pod]

That’s very true! Aman seems to spring eternal.