The Trouble with Lichen is a classic tale from 1960, a speculation on what would happen if somebody discovered the fountain of youth.  Short answer: the forces of societal greed and selfishness would erupt.

A biochemist and his young, female employee independently discover the anti-aging effects of a strain of lichen but don’t tell each other.  Diana leaves the firm to start a beauty and cosmetics business where she mixes the special chemical into her products for select female customers. They unwittingly retard their aging process by a third. Nobody really believes the anti-aging claims of beauty products, but this group of a thousand women in fact  will live to be 200.  It will take some years, even a decade, for anyone to notice.

Inexplicably, the original scientist at the institute does nothing with the discovery except secretly administer it to himself and his family. He seems to exist in the story only to legitimize the discovery of the drug by a young female. That’s how gender thinking was back then.

Diana’s motivation for starting the beauty products company is vaguely feminist. She believes that the sirens of marriage and motherhood are devastating to a woman’s potential but too difficult to ignore, so her idea is to let women go through all that and then still have a lengthy life to realize their full potential in other areas.  Assuming they want to. Assuming they have any curiosity left after 25 years of child-rearing. Assuming they have the financial resources to do what they please. Assuming all women are the same.  And so on. It’s a wobbly concept, but well-intentioned.

Inevitably of course, the secret leaks out and the dark and greedy sides of most characters, and of the society in general, come to the fore.  Everybody wants to live 200 years and a lot of people want to control the lichen, and that’s what the story focuses on, with no discussion of how pension, education, and health-care systems would have to be revised; no discussion of labor markets, politics and economics.  Again it is a superficial treatment of an interesting idea.

We may now be on the cusp of finding such a fountain of youth, either through genetic engineering or biochemistry (e.g., rapamycin, an age-extending drug being tested). Whether Wyndham’s  vision of the result plays out or some other scenario does, the consequences will surely be an upheaval.

This story counts as psi-fi since it is primarily about our attitudes, individually and collectively, toward aging and how those are affected by technological change. The feminist theme adds another psychological thread.  The driving force of the story however is the MacGuffin of the lichen: who’s got it and who wants it.

I originally thought I’d like to write psi-fi like this, emphasizing the mystery and thriller aspect, leaving the psychological themes to emerge through the cracks, but eventually I decided to write directly about the psychological effects with the objective story-drivers secondary.  Still, this is a good example of mid-century psi-fi.

Wyndham, John (1960/1970). The Trouble with Lichen.  U.K.: Michael Joseph/Penguin