Dragaera

Immortality

Howard Brazee howard at brazee.net
Tue Jun 22 18:56:51 PDT 2004

Damien Sullivan wrote:

> People will still die of accidents and suicide and such.  Unless we
> get backups, in which case lots more things can change.

In the latest Wil McCarthy book, someone who obviously had backups died
anyway.   It didn't make any sense.   But he is exploring immortality in an
interesting way.   Oddly enough Elizabeth Moon's space opera is doing this.
But her Nebula winner is more interesting in exploring identity with change.

Steve explores change quite effectively - but not much with Dragaerans.

It is interesting that Dragaerans do have deadly hobbies.

And we do see very long term plans and revenges made.   But the people who
change are humans (people change in other novels as well).

>> their small size), but is that at all realistic? And how much point
>> is there in living a thousand years if you can only remember a
>> hundred of them?
>
> We don't remember a lot of our lives in detail as it is.  Lots of
> daily details just aren't important.  Skills and big events events
> and who to trust are important.

I am no longer the person I used to be, and I have forgotten much of it.
What is the sense of living past infanthood if we don't remember most of it?