Writer's Block: Who wants to live forever?

[seawasp]

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Well, provisionally yes. The provisional part being that I could decide to die if living palled on me. I wouldn't want Isstvan's immortality (from Foglio's adaptation of Another Fine Myth) in which not only don't you age, you can't even be KILLED.

Oh, and I also don't want the version where you live forever but don't stop aging, AKA the Struldbrug problem.

Comments

[ross-teneyck.livejournal.com]

A thousand cautionary tales warn that one has to be extremely careful to examine the exact conditions of any immortality offer. E.g.:

• Are there any circumstances at all under which you can die? Does this include you choosing to die?


• What about wounds and disease? Do you recover from them faster than a normal human, at the same rate, or not at all? If "at the same rate," what happens if you acquire what would normally be an incurable disease, for example an aggressive cancer?


• Do you age? If not, what age are you locked in at? Can you change your apparent age by any means?


• Does your immortality come with conditions? For example, must you return to a specific location every hundred years?


• Does your immortality come with side effects? For example, is there an ancient society dedicated to killing you?


• Does your immortality come with a destiny? For example, are you the only one who can sacrifice him/herself to the Dark Lord to save all of humanity when the time comes?


• Are you able to have children, or does immortality equal sterility?


• Are you able to keep learning new things indefinitely, or will you eventually achieve the maximum capacity of the human brain? If the latter, what happens then?

These are all questions I would want to have answered before signing on the dotted line.

[seawasp]

Yeah, but the question wasn't "A genie appears and offers to grant you immortality. What do you say?"

("Are you being run by a screw GM or by me?")