Brian May wrote this song for the movie “Highlander.”
An article about the Robert Pimm Event at the Café Ministerium on 22 October 2021
By Wolfgang Geissler
I am starting with three statements or quotes without actually wanting to comment on them:
“Death is very likely the single best invention of Life”, apparently uttered by Steve Jobs (died 5 October 2011 of a rare form of Pancreatic Cancer)
“To die will be an awfully big adventure,” said Peter Pan, who did not want to grow up.
“Assisted suicide possible for the seriously ill from 2022. A ‘death decree’ can only be drawn up personally by the person concerned. Anyone who has this can get a lethal drug in the pharmacy.” Breaking News “Die Presse” 23 October 2021.
What is “Corona Crime” by Robert Pimm about without giving too much away?
Let me start. But first, a word of warning.
When Eos, Titan of the dawn, kidnapped Tithonus from the royal house of Troy to be her lover, she asked Zeus to make him immortal.
But she forgot to ask for eternal youth.
Tithonus lived forever, ageing all the while. A wizened, cricket-like creature hunched in his bare cell, lonely and in pain, he begged throughout eternity for death to come and fetch him.
Throughout history, human beings have longed to live longer. But it was not until the twenty-first century that life extension research combined with attempts to combat repeated coronavirus pandemics to produce a technology that would enable living forever and eliminating poverty at a stroke. That technology was “Coronatime”.
Who would not want to live longer by buying extra years of life expectancy from someone else? If you are rich, you can pay a poor person to give you years of their life. At the same time, the donor receives a substantial sum of money to live in comfort for their remaining lifespan.
Robert Pimm, better known to us as Leigh Turner, former British Ambassador, now retired and living at the Quartier Belvedere in 1100 Vienna at the eighteenth floor, describes “Corona Crime” as a sci-fi thriller (without spaceships), written for a world that is obsessed by living longer. It is also a comedy and a love story, set in Vienna, a work of fiction located in the twenty-third century. He stresses that none of the Coronatime enforcement agents, assassins, criminals or workers for imaginary US government agencies are based on anyone he’s ever met or even seen on TV. It also seems that a future European Union has been renamed the European Company, by now with 42 member states, with the dreaded European Company Police. They always move in groups of twelve to be able to speak all the European languages.
It seems that Austria had a series of referendums on whether to keep their borders when many other countries abolished theirs. First, they got rid of their frontiers, then re-introduced them to keep the Germans out. That last statement caused an eruption of laughter in the audience!
Robert Pimm insists that he is not aware of any life-exchange technology as Coronatime. However, if one is invented, he expects it to be popular and pose ethical and political dilemmas.
“Corona Crime” is Robert Pimm’s third book. His fourth will be published in the US sometime in May and is called “Palladium”.
After reading a couple of chapters from his book, we could buy it for €15 and have it signed.
What followed was the by now typical and famed hospitality of the Café Ministerium in the most extraordinary convivial atmosphere.
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