Modern literature about immortality is written primarily by authors who expect to die, and their grapes are accordingly sour.
This is still just as true as when this essay was written, I think—even the Culture had its human citizens mostly choosing to die after a time… to the extent that I eventually decided: if you want something done properly, do it yourself.
But there are exceptions—the best example of published popular fiction that has immortality as a basic fact of life is the Commonwealth Saga by Peter F Hamilton and the later Void Trilogy (the first couple of books were out in 2007).
The Commonwealth has effective immortality, a few downsides of it are even noticable (their culture and politics is a bit more stagnant than we might like), but there’s never any doubt at all that it’s worth it, and it’s barely commented on in the story,
In truth, I suspect that if people were immortal, they would not think overmuch about the meaning that immortality gives to life.
(Incidentally, the latter-day Void Trilogy Commonwealth is probably the closest a work of published fiction has come to depicting a true eudaimonic utopia that lacks the problems of the culture)
I wonder if there’s been any harder to detect shift in how immortality is portrayed in fiction since 2007? Is it still as rare now as then to depict it as a bad thing?
This is still just as true as when this essay was written, I think—even the Culture had its human citizens mostly choosing to die after a time… to the extent that I eventually decided: if you want something done properly, do it yourself.
But there are exceptions—the best example of published popular fiction that has immortality as a basic fact of life is the Commonwealth Saga by Peter F Hamilton and the later Void Trilogy (the first couple of books were out in 2007).
The Commonwealth has effective immortality, a few downsides of it are even noticable (their culture and politics is a bit more stagnant than we might like), but there’s never any doubt at all that it’s worth it, and it’s barely commented on in the story,
(Incidentally, the latter-day Void Trilogy Commonwealth is probably the closest a work of published fiction has come to depicting a true eudaimonic utopia that lacks the problems of the culture)
I wonder if there’s been any harder to detect shift in how immortality is portrayed in fiction since 2007? Is it still as rare now as then to depict it as a bad thing?