Written in September 2023 but for some unknown reason not actually posted until January 2024.
I’m not long back from a beach holiday, which was the excuse — well, the impetus — to do what I could do on any idle Tuesday: put down my phone and pick up a novel.
If my own, slender attempts at fiction have anything in common, the theme is immortality. In The Good Shabti, Pharoah Mentuhotep takes the after-life for granted, while amoral scientists attempt to reignite dead brains. ‘Round Trip’ considers, inter alia, what one might do with eternity, and what could animate someone to want to live forever. ‘Frozen Out’ is about cryogenics.
Immortality is also the theme of Void Star by Zachary Mason. This is spec-fic where two variants are presented: anti-ageing; and the possibility that one might upload one’s consciousness into a computer, to be preserved and propagated (and perhaps, if one suffers a catastrophic injury, to be rebooted).
Continue reading “Rationing Immortality”