Immortality in Fantasy and Science Fiction: Grief, Power, and the Fear of Ending
Immortality in fantasy and science fiction is rarely just a longer life. It changes the scale on which a person has to exist. A mortal life can be fulfilled, wasted, interrupted or completed, but time still gives it an external shape. An immortal life must find that shape elsewhere. It needs some principle of selection: what to remember, what to release, what to continue wanting and which version of the self should be permitted to survive. Stories about immortality do not agree on what endless life would do to the mind because they do not agree on what a life consists of. When life is attachment, immortality accumulates grief. When it is ownership, duration becomes possession. When it is authority, longevity hardens into incumbency. When it is duty, the immortal may begin treating entire generations as material for a future only they claim to understand. The most interesting divide is therefore not blessing against curse. It lies between different ways of carrying time. Some immo...