Re: Could there be a Gnarly Man in current times?

On 5/8/24 10:21 AM, Cryptoengineer wrote:

On 5/7/2024 3:39 PM, Tony Nance wrote:

So I’m making my way through The Best of L Sprague de Camp, and I just
(re)read “The Gnarly Man”. It made me wonder ... well, first a quick
summary for context:
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This story was written in 1939 and is set in 1956. It’s about an
immortal Neanderthal - basically he stopped aging around the age of
33. He most definitely looks the part, and he’s intelligent,
articulate, knowledgable, knows dozens of languages, etc etc etc, A
fundamental part of his long-term survival has been to avoid attention
- nothing high profile or noteworthy, move on to a new place every
10-15 years (sooner if necessary), etc.[1]
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That said, throughout his 52,000 years, he has pretty consistently
been part of society, not some sort of loner hiding out in the wilds.
Here, we initially find him performing as an ape-man in a carnival
show. During the story he mentions he has also been a blacksmith, a
maker of false teeth (he says he invented them [2]), a wagon driver
(transporting goods), a professional wrestler, an archer in a Briton
army (vs the Romans), a cabbie, and he ran a sawmill. (I may have
missed some.)
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And this made me wonder:
Given his obvious physical differences, and with modern technology and
communication being what it is, are there ways he could he stay a
member of modern society and also avoid attention?
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Tony, having some initial thoughts, but curious about yours
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[1] Poul Anderson revisits this mode of survival for immortals in The
Boat of A Million Years. Of course, in Poul’s book, the immortals are
modern-type humans who don’t look any different.
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[2] He also invented soup, by necessity, since his teeth wore out and
he hadn’t invented false teeth yet.

 
PJ Plauger also explored this in 'Child of all Ages'.
 
There, the protagonist also has the problem of appearing to be an 10
year old girl. Thus she both lacked much agency, and couldn't go too
long before her lack of aging was noticed.
 
An adult immortal could become quite rich through the effects of
compound interest. However, staying under the government's radar
becomes increasingly difficult.
 

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Agreed - both parts. As it turns out, de Camp did not mention banking or
compound interest in this story, so we don't know what he would have
thought about it.
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