Anti-agathic

An anti-agathic is something that prolongs life, especially a drug or treatment with that effect. James Blish coined the term, using it as both noun and adjective, in his Cities in Flight series, regarding the drugs that characters took to give them immortality for long spaceflights.

Blish first used anti-agapic and anti-athapic in the short stories that later became the fix-up Earthman, Come Home in 1955. In “At Death’s End” (Astounding Science Fiction, May 1954), Blish settled on anti-agathic, which he used in later works:

So what we’re looking for now is not an antibiotic — an anti-life drug — but an anti-agathic, an anti-death drug.

Other writers picked it up from there.

• “Anti-agathic” by Dr. Grant Hutchinson, The Oikofuge, July 26, 2017.

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Fanspeak

1955—

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