corpsicle n.

His wife, Mildred, has made many contributions, including a new name for the frozen, brittle people: Homo Snapiens. (This is certainly more dignified than Fred Pohl’s ‘corpsesicles’.)

It is true, however, that no corpsicle has yet been thawed and returned to life, and there’s no firm estimate of when one will be.

‘Your newstapers called you people corpsicles… I never understood what the tapes meant.’ ‘It comes from popsicle. Frozen sherbet.’ Corbett had used the word himself before he had became one of them. One of the corpsicles, frozen dead.

‘People used to call them corpsicles, frozen dead. Or Homo snapiens. You can imagine what would happen if you dropped them.’ Mr. Restarick did not smile. These people were in his charge, and he took his task seriously.

I did not fully appreciate that last until I saw, in an election news story, that the corpsicles at Prehoda Pines Patience Park constituted three precincts all voting through pre-registered proxies.

He took a breath, and let it out carefully. ‘I see. I guess you would get—pretty hardened, after a while. Is it true you guys call them corpse-sicles?’ ‘Some do,’ she admitted. ‘I don’t.’

It had taken eight months for the last of the corpsicles in New Mayflower to be thawed, oriented, and paradropped to Newmanhome’s surface.

Nobody’s ever brought back a corpsicle.

There are strong moral and religious feelings on Earth now about corpsicles; revival has been outlawed in seven nations.

It started when a janitor found a corpsicle floating in a rooftop swimming pool next to Central Park one August morning. A stiff, but I mean stiff.

I don’t fancy leaving here as a corpsicle in steerage.

Look, if it freezes to death we just unfreeze it, reboot it, and it’ll be as good as new. Or if its bod becomes a corpsicle, we just go back to the manufacturer and order another one.