Back to Methuselah (A Metabiological Pentateuch) by George Bernard Shaw consists of a preface (The Infidel Half Century) and a series of five plays: In the Beginning: B.C.
4004 (In the Garden of Eden), The Gospel of the Brothers Barnabas: Present Day, The Thing Happens: A.D. 2170, Tragedy of an Elderly Gentleman: A.D. 3000, and As Far as Thought Can Reach: A.D. 31,920.
Adam and Eve, as avatars for aboriginal humanity, discover a fawn dead from a broken neck and realize they, too, will die eventually from some mishap, even though they are immune to aging.
A few centuries slip by; Eve and Adam have aged a bit, but otherwise have changed but little: She spends her time by spinning flax for weaving, he digs in the garden.
Two brothers, one a retired, but influential cleric (Franklyn) and the other a biologist of note (Conrad), independently conclude that humans must increase their lifespans to three centuries in order to acquire the wisdom and experience needed to make complex civilizations functional.
A housemaid announces the opportune arrival of Lubin and Burge, two prominent politicians with antagonistic viewpoints; they will serve as sounding-boards while the brothers present their case for the need of longer lifetimes.
One of them is cynical, not believing longevity will happen, but the other deems the theory valid, yet rejects the prospect out of hand because longer lives will be available to everyone instead of only the elite.
The hard work of government is carried out by hired consultants from Africa and China unless competent Scots, Irishmen or Welshmen chance to be available.
Barnabas goes to meet the American inventor, who wants to use Records Office film footage to create a promotional cinema showing sundry important Britons who have lost their lives by drowning, but who, with the invention's help, might not have perished.
The Minister of Health is a beautiful Black African woman, and the Presidential conference turns out to be a dalliance via long-distance videophone.
He reveals that the drowned notables in the film clips at the Records Office are all the same person whose multiple demises had ended several significant careers.
Consternation reigns behind them because the others realise that, with the secret out, other long-lifers, previously in hiding, will emerge to join them and form a colony that will seem a threat to short-lived people.
At that point the Minister of Health phones again to tell Burge-Lubin she has changed her mind and invites him to share an amorous adventure aboard her yacht, presently in Fishguard Bay.
The Tragedy of an Elderly Gentleman begins in 3000 AD, on the south shore of Galway Bay where an old man is found sitting on an ancient stone bollard, once used as a mooring for ships.
She, being long lived understands no metaphors and speaks the literal truth, while he consistently uses figures of speech instead of stating simple facts.
Her concern is that the old man's tears are a sign that he is suffering from discouragement, a dire sickness contracted by short-livers when they talk to long-livers over sixty.
He rushes from the courtyard, blowing a whistle to summon the police, but is immobilized, within a force-field, near a monument of Falstaff, where he will stand and gibber until it is convenient to collect him.
Zozim and Zoo, dressed impressively in costumes that they disparage as foolish, but are demanded by their short-lived clients, lead the visiting party into the temple.
Zozim belittles that display as well, but the visitors are overawed and become unnerved completely when the oracle appears as an insubstantial figure amidst lightnings and thunder.
On the west side stands a little classic temple and in the middle of the glade there is a marble altar, shaped like a table, and long enough for a man to lie on.
As they dance, a stranger, physically in the prime of life but with a wrinkled, timeworn face, comes down the stony stairs, rapt in contemplation, and bumps heedlessly into a pair of dancers.
He leaves and the children pledge to stay forever young, but Chloe, somewhat older, says she feels drawn toward the ancient's way of life.
The birthing proceeds: In procession, youths carry a new tunic, ewers of water, big sponges and, finally a huge egg, which is placed upon the altar.
The Ancient deftly opens the shell using a pair of saws and reveals a pretty girl, looking fresh and rosy, but with strands of spare albumen clinging to her body.
Pygmalion has successfully created a pair of living, artificial human beings and is ready to display them, which he does, to an audience made impatient by his incomprehensible scientific explanations.
The Ancients make use of the occasion to explain the realities of life to the young ones, compare artistic images to dolls and to say interest in them will be outgrown.
Shaw uses science fictioneering in Methuselah to add plausibility to scenarios and to keep readers entertained while he propounds his vision of the human destiny.
The final play, As Far as Thought Can Reach, offers no solution to the problem: Humans evolve to the point of becoming free-ranging vortices of energy, able to wander, solitary, through the Universe, thus requiring no government at all.
He considered it a book for reading rather than playing on the stage, and was agreeably surprised when Lawrence Langner in New York and Barry Vincent Jackson in Birmingham insisted on producing it despite expectations of monetary loss, which were promptly justified.
[12] The BBC, in contrast, was able to provide lavish scenery by sheer power of description for its 1958 radio production of the entire play,[13] Shaw's scientific rationale for evolving long-lived humans depended on the inheritance of acquired characteristics.