Suspended animation in fiction which is indistinguishable from death. In American fiction, the first story to deal with suspended animation is the tale of Rip Van Winkle, a short story by American author Washington Irving published in 1819 as well as the name of the story's fictional protagonist. In the story, a British subject in the American colonies wanders into the Catskill Mountains in the years before the American Revolutionary War, and finds a group of fairies, whose moonshine he drinks. He then falls asleep for 20 years, and returns to his village in what is now the United States, finding his home town
The Rip Van Winkle Caper The futuristic car carrying the couple who find the dying Farwell is a leftover prop, somewhat modified, from MGM's 1956 film "Forbidden Planet". The Rip Van Winkle Caper "The Rip Van Winkle Caper" is episode 60 of the American television anthology series "The Twilight Zone". It originally aired on April 21, 1961 on CBS. To escape the law after stealing $1 million worth of gold bricks (equal to $ million today) from a train on its way from Fort Knox to Los Angeles, a band of four thieves, led by scientist-mastermind Farwell, hide in a secret cave in Death Valley,