Immortality is a common theme in fiction. The concept has been depicted since the Epic of Gilgamesh, the oldest known work of fiction. Originally appearing in the domain of mythology, it has later become a recurring element in the genres of horror, science fiction, and fantasy. For most of literary history, the dominant perspective has been that the desire for immortality is misguided, albeit strong; among the posited drawbacks are ennui, loneliness, and social stagnation. This view was challenged in the 20th century by writers such as George Bernard Shaw and Roger Zelazny. Immortality is commonly obtained either from supernatural entities or objects such as the Fountain of Youth or through biological or technological means such as brain transplants.
History The oldest known fictional account of immortality is also the oldest surviving work of fiction: the Epic of Gilgamesh, an ancient Sumerian tale from . Several Greek myths of antiquity depict mortals such as Ganymede and Tithonus being granted everlasting life by the gods. Influenced by Taoist philosophical thought, Chinese fiction has featured immortality since at least the 1500s. Several historical figures have been portrayed as immortals after their deaths, including Nicolas Flamel and the Count of St. Germain. In Arthurian literature, Sir Galahad attains immortality through the Holy Grail. In medieval Europe, the Christian legend of the Wandering Jew emerged, wherein a man is cursed to live forever for a slight against Jesus. This story was then reworked over and over again by numerous authors across the centuries, well past the end of the Middle Ages and into the 1800s, with Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and Alexandre Dumas each making their own version which both remain unfinished. The 1800s also saw several Gothic stories of the downsides of immortality. Progress in the field of medicine inspired science fiction stories about immortality in the late 1800s and early 1900s; most of these took a dim view of the prospect of eternal life but more positive attitudes also appeared. By the 1930s, opinions were divided into camps with favourable and unfavourable views on immortality, with authors such as Neil R. Jones and Laurence Manning writing stories where it presents opportunities and others such as D. D. Sharp and Damon Knight depicting it as a cause of stagnation. This division continued at least until the 1960s. Following research into biotechnology and cryonics, the conception that not having to die of old age might soon be a medical reality gained popularity—reflected in the non-fiction works The Prospect of Immortality by Robert Ettinger from 1964 and Conquest of Death by Alvin Silverstein from 1979—and since at least the 1980s, there has been a trend of more analytical treatments of immortality in fiction, as well as contes philosophiques.
Types
Depictions of immortality vary in a number of ways. The common feature across all types is indefinitely prolonged lifespans. The absence of ageing—i.e. eternal youth—is typically also involved, though some exceptions such as the Greek myth of Tithonus and the Struldbruggs of Jonathan Swift's 1726 novel Gulliver's Travels exist. It may or may not entail being insusceptible to dying from injuries; to distinguish between the concepts, immortality without this property may be referred to by other terms such as emortality, a term used by Alan Harrington and Alvin Silverstein, or postmortality, a term used by Michael Hauskeller. Carol Zaleski distinguishes between several different types of immortality, principally physical immortality—or "everlasting longevity"—and immortality of the soul, where the latter is further subdivided by other features such as whether it is inherent or needs to be acquired. It is mainly physical immortality that appears in fiction, immortality of the soul being mostly found in the domains of religion and philosophy.
The most common form of immortality is that of one individual living a single life, but there are also stories featuring multiple beings fusing into an immortal entity—such as Greg Bear's 1985 novel Blood Music—and stories of one individual living multiple lives in succession in a manner akin to reincarnation. Complete immunity to death is uncommon outside of religious contexts and is usually non-corporeal in nature. Science fiction occasionally features immortality not of living beings, but of the entire universe by overcoming the issues caused by entropy preventing self-perpetuation; the 1972 novel The Gods Themselves by Isaac Asimov is one example.
Undeath, seen for instance in zombies and vampires, is sometimes considered a form of immortality, and sometimes viewed as a separate concept. Occasionally, vampires are considered immortal in contrast to zombies being viewed as undead. Vampiric immortality is characterized by being conditional, inasmuch as continued access to human blood is necessary to sustain it. Zombie immortality, on the other hand, is characterized by the loss of personhood.
Works of fiction featuring immortality can be classified by the number of immortals: one, several, or everyone. Works with lone immortals can be further subdivided into those where the immortality is a secret and those where it is not. Conversely, the 1990 novella Outnumbering the Dead by Frederik Pohl features a lone mortal in a world where everyone else is immortal, as does the 2009 film Mr. Nobody.
Narrative function Authors often use immortality as a theme in fictional narratives to explore its consequences on society and the individual as a thought experiment. For many of these stories, the purpose is to serve as a cautionary tale. It is also used for social commentary and as the basis for both utopian and dystopian fiction. In other works it functions as a MacGuffin, providing motivation for characters as a goal to strive towards. Immortality is sometimes used to enable telling stories that span a period of time longer than a normal human lifespan without replacing the main characters. Occasionally, it is only a background feature used to suggest high levels of scientific and technological advancement.
Means
The means by which immortality is obtained are varied, ranging from the traditional Fountain of Youth and elixir of life to advanced medicine and technology. Some authors assume that scientific progress will eventually lead to immortality, and for this reason humans living in the far future are often depicted as having attained this goal, including in Arthur C. Clarke's 1956 novel The City and the Stars. A common motif is that of immortality obtained through the deaths of others. Examples include numerous vampire stories where the vampires' immortality is sustained by drinking human blood, the 2011 film In Time where lifetime is transferred from the multitude of poor to the wealthy elite such that the immortality of the few depends on the deaths of the many, and Norman Spinrad's 1969 novel Bug Jack Barron where the source of immortality is derived from the tissues of murdered children. Biological and medical Immortality is accomplished by selective breeding and eugenics in works like the 1942 novel Methuselah's Children by Robert A. Heinlein and the 1930 novel Last and First Men by Olaf Stapledon. Prior to the first successful blood transfusions, some stories in the late 1800s featured the idea that such procedures would have a rejuvenating effect granting extended lifespans, including Robert Duncan Milne's A Man Who Grew Young Again from 1887; Georges Eekhoud's 1884 story Le coeur de Tony Wandel (Tony Wandel's Heart) uses heart transplants in a similar manner. Blood is also the source of immortality in James E. Gunn's 1962 novel The Immortals, where a genetic mutation gives rise to blood that confers immortality, which others consequently seek to obtain. Other works have also occasionally depicted immortality as being obtained congenitally or unintentionally; certain fantasy creatures such as the Elves in the legendarium of J. R. R. Tolkien are inherently immortal, the title character of the 2007 film The Man from Earth is an otherwise ordinary human who stopped ageing for unknown reasons some 14,000 years ago, and René Barjavel's 1973 novel Le Grand Secret revolves around the discovery of a highly contagious virus that confers immortality on those who are infected. In the 2005 short story "The Reincarnated Giant" by Chinese author Wang Jinkang, immortality is attainable by replacing aged body parts one at a time. Symbiosis with other lifeforms, typically alien ones, causes immortality in some stories. Examples include George R. R. Martin's 1974 short story "A Song for Lya", F. Paul Wilson's 1976 novel Healer, and Anne McCaffrey's 1982 novel Crystal Singer. Drugs that extend life indefinitely by stopping the process of ageing are depicted in James Blish's 1956 novel They Shall Have Stars, Frank Herbert's 1965 novel Dune, and Poul Anderson's 1966 novel World Without Stars, among others.
Technological Immortality is accomplished by way of medical nanobots in Jeffrey Carver's 1989 novel From a Changeling Star. In Joe Haldeman's 1974 novel The Forever War, immortality is caused by paradoxes arising from time travel. Immortality of the mind is sometimes accomplished by periodically moving it to a new physical body, transferring either just the consciousness as in A. E. van Vogt's 1948 novel The World of Null-A or transplanting the entire brain as in Michael G. Coney's 1974 novel Friends Come in Boxes; the new body is a clone of the original person in some works such as John Varley's 1977 novel The Ophiuchi Hotline and an entirely different person in others such as the 2017 film Get Out. Similarly, personality traits are transferred from one person to another using the malaria parasite as a vector to attain a form of immortality in Indian author Amitav Ghosh's 1995 novel The Calcutta Chromosome. Digital
A common theme in cyberpunk is digital immortality, achieved by transferring a person's consciousness to a computer. One version of this concept involves the uploaded mind being conscious inside the machine, as in William Gibson's Sprawl trilogy starting with the 1984 novel Neuromancer. Attitudes towards this kind of existence vary between and within stories. The argument that it should be no more unappealing than having artificial body parts is made in Damien Broderick's 2002 novel Transcension, while in John Crowley's 1979 novel Engine Summer it is viewed as a type of imprisonment. In Frederik Pohl's 1977–2004 novel series the Heechee Saga, one character enjoys the capabilities afforded by having vast computational power available directly to the mind, whereas another dreads the prospect of serving the entirety of a millennia-long prison sentence. In Greg Egan's 2002 novel Schild's Ladder the digital existence is so convincing it can be mistaken for the physical world, and Egan's 1994 novel Permutation City raises the issue of whether an uploaded mind is the same person or merely a copy. Another version of the concept is seen in Arthur C. Clarke's The City and the Stars, where the uploaded minds are kept in storage without consciousness for transfer to a new body as one becomes available and then uploaded again when the body dies, allowing for an unlimited number of sequential lifetimes.
Cryonics