Photo by Rhendi Rukmana on Unsplash

Ever heard of cryonics? Sure you have. The sci-fi genre is filled with references to the practice, and there are even documentaries describing the low-temperature preservation procedure that several (dead) people have already undergone with hopes that they will be revived in the future.

Immortality is something we seem desperate to attain. Many of our scientific endeavors seek to find ways to stop the aging process, but also to transcend ourselves digitally. We’re probably on the right track, too. But what we do with ourselves when we get there is a question left unanswered. This famous quote by British novelist Susan Erz echoes it best:

Millions long for immortality who do not know what to do with themselves on a rainy Sunday afternoon.

— Susan Erz

The Internet doesn’t have much on Ertz. She lived from 1894 and 1985 and was a British fiction writer and novelist. Her works are riddled with female heroines thrust in dystopian worlds, like Woman Alive, a science fiction novel where all women other than the main heroine have perished in a plague.

One of her later books, In the Cool of the Day, spawned a romantic drama in 1963 starring Peter Finch, Jane Fonda, Angela Lansbury, Arthur Hill, Nigel Davenport, and John Le Mesurier. The namesake film garnered mixed reviews but had a fairly positive rating from viewers.

Erz was born in Walton-on-Thames, Surrey, England to American parents Charles and Mary Ertz. She traveled to the United States in her youth, but decided to moved back to the UK and settle there soon after she turned 18. She was married to British Army officer Major John Ronald McCrindle.