[OT]Books Dealing With Immortality?

[Dr Bunsen Honeydew]

Have you conisdered reading Douglas Adams' Hitch Hikers Guide to the Galaxy sereis? One of the occasionally resurring characters ( I believe he turns up early in the second book is Wowbagger the Infinitely Prolonged, a being whose only task is to insult every being in the universe.

In alphabetical order.

A good read

 

[Buttercup]

I'd like to echo the suggestion to read Boat of a Million Years. I read it years ago, but still remember it vividly.

 

[Oni]

Thanks, I'll look in to what has been posted so far, but please keep them coming (that is assuming there are more to keep coming).

 

[Psychotic Jim]

Do computer games count?

I don't know if you would be interested in computer games on this topic, but I highly suggest the Planescape Torment computer game if you can find it. *Spoilers* In the game the protangonist is an immortal who seeks his mortality and to finally achieve eternal rest. He also seeks to discover his true identity, for he does not even remember his name. The Nameless One, as he is called, has lived hundreds of different lives because after he "died" he forgot who he was and even his personality. It takes immortality, a lot of times seen as a blessing, and turns it on its head making it seem like a curse. I think also the game might have been made into a novel too.

 

[haiiro]

Riverworld series

In an unusual way, Philip Jose Farmer's Riverworld books deal with immortality. The basic premise is that everyone who ever lived on Earth is resurrected (at once) on a strange planet, with no real technology to speak of - and anyone who dies is simply reborn elsewhere on the same world. (None of this spoils anything - you learn it all at the beginning of the first book.)

There's so much more, and they are excellent books.

The main books in order:

To Your Scattered Bodies Go
The Fabulous Riverboat
The Dark Design
The Magic Labyrinth
Gods of Riverworld