Otherways- Fiction Fanatics

While I was writing a blog post, it occurred to me that mankind has been historically obsessed with the concept of eternal life. I'm not talking about heaven or hell, but actually living a physically eternal life. I love being alive, it certainly beats the alternative, so I can appreciate the appeal, especially on a warm spring day when the world is at its most beautiful. Who would want to give that up?

Not the Greeks, nor the Egyptians, Chinese, or any other culture I've found. For the Greeks and Romans, there was always a chance that if you did great deeds in the name of the Gods, you would be elevated to live on Olympus or among the stars as a hero. This has always struck me as a bit like expecting to get your life renewed on carousel in that old Science Fiction classic movie, Logan's Run. You had to be either extremely beautiful, or a dangerous warrior, and the Gods had to favor you. Of course it helped a lot if one of your parents actually was a God, possibly disguised as a white bull, or a swan, or...but that's a discussion for another time. Immortality belonged to the few, and only if they did impossible deeds in the name of the Gods.

The Egyptians were a lot more practical about it. Immortality belonged to the people that could pay to be properly preserved, so that their bodies could be of use to them when they wanted to bother with flesh again. Their version of immortality seemed to bridge the concepts of a purely spiritual afterlife and a purely physical eternity. Yes, after death the heart, or conscience of the deceased would be weighed on the scales of Maat, goddess of justice. If his heart was burdened by deceit, then the scales would tip, and he'd get his heart devoured by the ever hungry demon Ammut. Blameless hearts walked in the fields of peace forever with their king Osiris. And yet, they clearly believed that that life, whatever it was, was going to be a lot like this one. They mummified their pets to take with them, as well as either mummified, or more frequently, clay models of servants. Eternal life was possible, you just had to be good. Oh, and it helped if you had a lot of money and influence.

For the Chinese, it seems to have been primarily the emperors that had a passion for living forever. Although to my knowledge none ever succeeded, the alchemists they had working on their behalf did manage to invent some interesting things. One of the more ironic discoveries was gunpowder. Funny how the search for eternal life led to such an effective method for ending life. Then again, it gave us fireworks, so it wasn't a complete mistake, even though the initial accidental formation is said to have claimed the lives of the alchemists working on it in a fiery explosion.

In the world of fiction, we're just as attached to the idea of living forever, or nearly so.  Anne Rice's novel  The Mummy does a fine job of exploring the good and the bad of eternal life,  themes also found in her vampire novels. Jim Butcher has his Fae, Tolkien has wizards, elves, and Sauron that have lived for ages, and the list could go on for pages. Let's face it, we readers love the immortals as much as any past culture did. Partly, I think, this is because we admire them, even the evil ones, for their ability to endure. We might even be seeking their secrets, reaching out to grasp an eternal life of our own.

For an author, writing is a kind of immortality. Your words and ideas will survive well beyond your death. For readers, though, there is the most fantastic immortality of all. Those who do not read are doomed to live a single life, from start to finish, bound by their finances, their health, and the merciless flow of time. Readers, however, select a book, a world, and in the space of a few hours step into it completely, living whatever life they have chosen to the very last page. When that life ends, they are free to choose another, or to relive it from the very beginning, unbound by the constraints that hold the non-reader to the here and now. Now that is my kind of immortality.

Cheers,

Michelle