introduces antiagathics as necessary for interstellar travel;
makes the point the even people with antiagathics will eventually die by violence or accident or even just by surviving until the end of the universe.
John Amalfi died in a hunting accident in an early version of the Chronology of Cities in Flight but then the end of the universe was introduced as the culminating event of a revised Chronology.
Contra Blish, it seems that Robert Heinlein's Lazarus Long and Neil Gaiman's Hob Gadling will never die. Also, Poul Anderson's Hugh Valland is very long-lived and Anderson's Hanno plans for at least another million years of life.
OK. So an "immortals'" conference might happen in the Old Phoenix?
Long
Gadling
Valland
Hanno
the Wandering Jew
someone from the Time Patrol?
there are others, of course
Time Patrol agents both time travel and do not age. I tried to show somewhere on the blog that their perception of time must be surreal. They time travel, can spend years in their past or their future but return to their present a moment after they had left it, do not age, remember some events that did not happen in the current timeline, must regard even an entire century as a very short time, would be able to read the entire contents of the records in their milieu HQ which exists only for a mere twenty years, do not work toward any retirement and are always in danger of returning from their past to an altered version of their present. All that would surely make time seem unreal, quite apart from their agelessness. And in the Old Phoenix, they would meet characters whose immortality is magical or supernatural in nature. If that is not surreal, then it will do till the real one comes along.
5 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
But I don't think even Hugh Valland and Hanno EXPECTED to live forever before some accident or act of violence killed them.
We also get glimpses of the Wandering Jew in Walter Miller's A CANTICLE FOR LEIBOWITZ.
Yes, it makes sense to note how SURREAL time must appear to agents of the Time Patrol. I think both milieu and Unattached agents were prohibited or discouraged from reading the complete biographies the Patrol had of them in their files. For obvious reasons! And another surreal touch!
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
And Miller's Wandering Jew was Lazarus: "What the Lord raise up, it stay up!"
You can't possibly enjoy reading this blog any more than I enjoy writing it.
Paul.
OK. Only real immortals would make a much shorter list.
Kaor, Paul!
Yes, the Wandering Jew has been traditionally considered Lazarus, whom Christ raised up from the dead. Btw, Catholic commentators tend to doubt stories like that. Their argument is that Lazarus was raised back only the ordinary kind of life we have, and would die again after a shorter or longer time. It was the Risen Christ whose body was glorified and transformed at the Resurrection, including being incapable of dying again.
And it seems only the Wandering Jew (in legend) and Christ make it to such a list. Even the physical of Tolkien's immortal elves can "die" or be slain.
The elves of Anderson's THE BROKEN SWORD, THREE HEARTS AND THREE LIONS, and A MIDSUMMER TEMPEST are immortal, but certainly not in a glorified sense. Also, the I wondered just now if pre-Christian, pagan Scandinavians thought of the elves as being immortal? I'm not sure.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
But the other story is that the guy somehow offended Christ en route to Calvary and the latter said, "Tarry thou till I come again."
Paul.
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