7 Books That Weigh the Pros and Cons of Immortality
There are all sorts of ways to cheat death in science fiction and fantasy. It’s only natural: mortality is kind of a bummer, and a huge barrier to cross—one we all secretly hope we’ll be able to vault during our lifetimes. Until humanity finally figures out how to crack that particular problem, the imaginations of numerous authors will have to suffice. But while living forever sounds pretty awesome, sometimes, under scrutiny, the methods by which it is achieved tend to look…a little upsetting. We wouldn’t be doing our jobs if we didn’t overthink things at least a little, so we’ve rounded up seven books that show the pros and cons of living forever.
Stubs, The Skill of Our Hands by Steven Brust and Skyler White
For thousands of years, a small group of dedicated individuals have been making our world a better place. While they move slowly, and change things in increments, they’re responsible for bringing humanity into the 21st century and clearing the way for incredible progress, both technologically and socially. When one of these “Incrementalists” dies, their soul and memories are stored in a “stub,” a kind of mystical receptacle for consciousness that allows them to be rehoused in a new body when the remaining Incrementalists find a willing candidate. The candidate then resumes helping to change the world in whatever ways they can…after a period of adjustment.
Pros: This is a pretty cool one. For the price of a hangover and weird dreams, you’re given the ability to influence people and change the world with just a few words. You’re also given your own backdoor into a dimension that functions as a collective subconscious, the guarantee of immortality, and a support network to help you adjust. On top of money, connections, and anything else you could think of…
Cons: …provided you win a mental coin toss that means your consciousness doesn’t get overwritten by the host body your friends decide to put you into. And provided you won the same coin flip when it was your turn to play host. Otherwise, chances are you just got overwritten, either by the host body, or by the incoming stub. On top of which, I cannot emphasize this enough, it’s not particularly fun to have a nightmare-causing piece of wood stabbed into your brain, regardless of how awesome the rewards are.
The Foundation for Human Immortality, Bug Jack Barron by Norman Spinrad
The Foundation is a group dedicated to finding the solution to aging and death, whatever the cost. Their early efforts involved perfecting cryogenic freezing, before moving on to even more radical and experimental treatments that would guarantee that humanity is preserved well into the future—and that their clients gain the kind of prosperous and deathless lives they always wanted.
Pros: All their methods do work. Both the rejuvenation treatments and the “freezers” (where people are kept until someone develops a cure for their disease) are highly effective, with results seen almost instantly.
Cons: As can be expected from a foundation whose goal is immortality, they’re a massive, not quite non-profit organization with a god complex. Add in some serious violations of scientific ethics, close ties to the GOP, and an unsurprising commitment to eugenics, and suddenly, that rosy future looks like a bunch of rich white people trying to kill poor black people to ensure their world domination. (cough cough) And that’s only what’s on the surface. What they’re doing behind the scenes is even more monstrous.
Rejuvenation Treatments, The Commonwealth Saga by Peter F. Hamilton
The Commonwealth takes care of its inhabitants via radical gene therapy treatments called “rejuvenation,” a process by which someone can wind the clock back all the way to their early twenties. Or, if they prefer, they can even undergo treatments to alter their bodies, turn themselves into animals, or pretty much anything else. If ever a citizen of the Commonwealth dies, their consciousness is stored on a handy USB drive that can be loaded into their next body, grown to specifications from the ground up by medical professionals.
Pros: Living forever in a society that prizes exploration and discovery above all things is pretty sweet, and they’ve effectively eradicated death. You get to live a life of adventure in an intergalactic empire where everyone travels by rail, and if you ever wind up in too deep, all it takes is for someone to recover your consciousness and slot it into a new body…
Cons: …provided someone recovers it, that person isn’t a kidnapper, and you can afford to have a body rebuilt. Most of the main cast in the Commonwealth Saga is relatively rich and well off, because either rebuilding or revitalizing someone’s body is not very cheap. There’s also the argument in-universe that what they call “full bodyloss” is death, since consciousness is not just something you can pour from one vessel to another like water. If that weren’t enough of a downside, rebuilding a body is apparently gross and very painful, since sometimes the recipients have to be awake while they’re rebuilding. Imagine having to be awake while your lungs reform. Yeah, us neither.
Ashlan Ley’s Curse, Viscera by Gabriel Squailia
Whatever happened to Ashlan Ley before the events of Viscera, it wasn’t pretty. By the novel start, she has been alive for centuries, unable to age or be killed, eking out a living as an apothecary using her alchemist training. She’s unsure why she’s been alive this long, or indeed what it is that makes her completely unkillable, but it’s so dire that when the first dubious offer to make it stop comes along, she jumps at it. Still, being completely immortal is a benefit at least some of the time, right?
Pros: When we say “completely immortal” what we mean is “more immortal than anyone else on this list.” Ley grows back organs, is able to keep going when impaled, and takes damage throughout the book that begins at mortal wounds and disembowelment. While she might not be able to get up right away, she will get up eventually. Plus, she never ages, which is something that’s always a boon when it comes to immortality. You can’t really get a much better combination than that.
Cons: Again, imagine having to be awake while your lungs reform. Or feeling your guts grow back. Also, being able to shake off any traumatic injury doesn’t mean you don’t still feel the pain from those traumatic injuries, so while swan-diving off of Niagara Falls may seem like a fun thing to do with your unkillable body, it’ll still be incredibly painful. Complicating matters, there is a reason Ley is unkillable, and while the resolution of her story arc (no spoilers) is a relief, the cost really isn’t worth the perks.
Losing your heart, The Firebird by Mercedes Lackey
The villainous Katschei in Lackey’s retelling of the Russian fairy tale has an immense amount of power, a terrifying array of creatures both real and mechanical at his command, and is completely deathless. All of this is at the cost of his heart, which he hid inside a diamond placed inside a nesting group of impossible creatures, all of whom are inside a chest guarded by a dragon. In this case, the power and immortality also comes with a massive palace, an army of monsters, and whatever else the Katschei wants.
Pros: The Katschei is able to create monsters, lives forever, has an orchard of magical fruit. Apart from being incredibly evil, he seems to have a lot of power to do with whatever he likes. This includes keeping magical creatures as pets, turning trespassers into monsters, and numerous other things besides. That’s a pretty decent package…
Cons: …but to get all of that, you still have to have your heart ripped out. That’s a lot of trauma, even in exchange for eternal life. Also, in spite of all the power, none of it seems to bring the Katschei any joy whatsoever. Apparently the heart and soul of a person is what allows them find happiness in the world around them; without it, he’s just kind of doing stuff to exert control and feed his own compulsions. That’s a terrible way to exist.
Digital uploading, Children of Time by Adrian Tchaikovsky
The idea that the secret to living forever lies in melding flesh and machine is certainly nothing new in science fiction. In Adrian Tchaikovsky’s Children of Time, the remnants of a dying Earth set out for the stars in generation ships. Thousands of souls make the trip in cold storage, which is a good way to while away the hours traveling the cosmos, but not really a recipe for everlasting life. For that, you need an upload terminal, like the one Dr. Avrana Kern uses at the beginning of the novel to store her brain inside a science pod orbiting the terraformed planet she’s seeded with a virus that she thinks will give rise to a new race of apes that can inherit the galaxy in humanity’s absence (not a spoiler alert: the planet’s dominant lifeform turns out to have rather more than four limbs).
Pros: To say Kern’s experiment doesn’t go well is an understatement; her research vessel is sabotaged by a fanatical anti-science zealot (just one of many such agents who manage to quickly revert humanity to the dark ages) and she’s forced to install a copy of herself into the computer while her body sleeps and the ship monitors the planet below for signs that intelligent life is developing. Without the upload, there would have been no discerning intelligence around to wake her up, artificial intelligences being not so intelligent in this future. SO that’s a plus: she’s able to wait and watch while her experiment (which, arguably, brought about the downfall of the human race) comes to fruition. That’s nice for any scientist, right?
Cons: On the downside, a few millennia inside the machine drives Kern completely mad, fracturing her mind into bickering personas who are, by turns, pathetic, confused, and downright sadistic. One of a later generation of surviving humans (remember, this book covers a lot of time) tries the same trick and almost destroys a starship, which would take down the entire species with him—but to be fair, he was a megalomaniac long before he uploaded. Let’s call the results inclusive, with an outlook that trends toward humanity’s extinction.
Immortality, The Culture Novels by Iain M. Banks
As a citizen of The Culture, you can choose to be immortal. Congratulations. If you don’t like your body, you can change it. Apart from that, you’re allowed to live a carefree life among hedonists who give themselves the common cold for funsies, doing whatever you could possibly want free from disease or death. Plus, the closest thing anyone has to rules are the friendly Minds who oversee the infrastructure, and the department of Special Circumstances, who protect the citizens from internal and external threats.
Pros: Do we really have to spell it out? Total immortality, and the only string attached is that you can’t be a jerk to people around you. It’s that simple.
Cons: Should you get it into your head to do something stupid, Special Circumstances will come down on you with all the force of a neutron bomb. It doesn’t matter the crime—if you’re a threat to Culture society, chances are they knew about you, and the least they will do is “recruit” you to carry out some esoteric assignment. Think of them as the stern dads of immortality, forever making sure you’re not a danger to yourself and others.
What to you think: is eternal mortal life worth it?