![]() It’s a drag making friends when they’re just going to die on you. One of the oft-cited problems of immortality is having to go to so many funerals. And they’re not even immortal, just ridiculously long-lived. Or you could end up like Robert Heinlein’s eugenically-created Howard families, who are hunted down by their neighbors and the government when some of them decide to spill the beans. It could be a sweet deal you might get to go on talk shows and have paparazzi make up stories about you in Us Weekly. With all the hassle, it’s tempting to just come out as immortal. In Neil Gaiman’s Sandman comics, the immortal Hob Gadling has to periodically fake his own death and come back as his own heir. Only after he’s spent most of it does he learn that, with inflation, $250,000 isn’t much money.Īnd you won’t even get to spend your pathetic hoard if people don’t believe you’re the same person who opened that bank account 200 years ago. Just put a few bucks into an interest-bearing account, wait a couple of centuries, and you’ll have a fortune, right? Charles Forrester, the cryogenically preserved hero of Frederik Pohl’s novel The Age of the Pussyfoot, is delighted to learn that he’s accumulated a quarter of a million dollars while in deep freeze. Most people assume that, given endless time, they can easily become millionaires. Which is exactly why the Weapon X project kidnapped him, peeled off his skin, and poured molten metal all over his bones. His “healing factor” allows him to regenerate from almost any injury and makes him effectively immortal. Muñoz can live indefinitely as long as he manages to protect his body from decay trouble arrives when his air conditioning goes out.Įven invulnerability can be a pain-literally. Lovecraft’s 1928 story “Cool Air,” the undead Dr. Remaining conscious in a rotting zombie body may be the most unappealing option of all. Forever.” Doesn’t sound like much fun.īut at least they don’t actively decompose. In the words of the two immortal murderesses, “Who could have imagined. Ultimately, they realize that their immortal bodies will require constant maintenance just to stay in one piece. ![]() The film Death Becomes Her pushes this to the extreme, with Meryl Streep and Goldie Hawn walking off broken necks and shotgun blasts through the midriff. If you’re immortal, but your powers of healing remain normal, you can look forward to racking up unsightly injuries throughout eternity. Immortality Doesn’t Equal Invulnerability Their version of immortality isn’t a long, sumptuous meal, but a hamster wheel, speeding ever faster but impossible to jump off of. She has to keep killing men for their pineal glands, which you can only do for so long before the cops get suspicious. In the 1960 B-movie The Leech Woman, a woman keeps herself young through a secret African formula of orchid pollen and pineal juice. In the Guillermo del Toro film Cronos, people achieve immortality through a device invented by a medieval alchemist-but they develop a vampiric need for fresh blood. Vampirism is the most obvious example: Sure, you get eternal life plus super-powers (superhuman strength, turning into a bat, the currently popular Sunlight Sparkle), but you have to drink all that darn blood. ![]() The things you have to go through to live forever make you wonder if it’s worth the effort. In the words of Queen, who wants to live forever? Not these folks. Even in the comparatively sweet world of fiction there are plenty of souls embittered by immortality. But before you sign up for immortality, be forewarned: It isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. You get to go everywhere, do everything, and collect stories you’ll be telling at parties for millennia. Series: The Tales of Gorlen VizenfirtheĮternal life seems like the sweetest of sweet deals.Series: From the Lost Travelers’ Tour Guide. ![]() People of Colo(u)r Destroy Science Fiction!. ![]()
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