Session 10: Contemplating Life and Death

1st Global Conference

Friday 3rd July – Saturday 5th July 2009
Mansfield College, Oxford

World Without End: An Examination of Immortality in Speculative Fiction
Ian Nichols
Curtin University, Western Australia

Aging is not simply the accumulation of years; it is also the accumulation of experience. It is something of a homily to insist that those who are older differ from those who are younger in ways which are not only physical, but it seems an inevitable conclusion of observation. As people live longer, healthier lives, is this difference exacerbated? What if people’s lives were enormously extended, even indefinitely extended?

Immortality and extended lifespan have been major themes in speculative fiction since The Epic of Gilgamesh, when Gilgamesh visits Utnapishtim in order to gain the secret of immortality. Rider Haggard’s She gained her immortality through the bath of life, Bram Stoker’s Dracula through the blood of the living. Oscar Wilde’s Dorian Grey gained extended life and health from a portrait hidden in an attic. Up to the present day, authors have speculated on both the cause and effect of extended life. Isaac Asimov has pointed out, in an article in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, that it could very well be, quite literally, a universal disaster. Other authors, such as Robert Heinlein, Poul Anderson, et al, have conjectured that those whose lives were extended could suffer discrimination.

This paper will discuss the concept of extended lifespan and immortality in the modern speculative fiction genre, with particular reference to the work of Robert Heinlein, Poul Anderson, Larry Niven and Roger Zelazny. The paper will examine the way in which the differences between younger and older people are represented when the gap between them is widened. It will explore the social effects of people simply getting older, and the compensations which these effects create.

Download Draft Conference Paper (pdf)

In this paper the love stories of gay men in contemporary Sydney, Melbourne and Auckland are examined in the context of the participants’ attitudes and experiences with HIV/AIDS. The participants were asked to reflect upon a common text, a well-known and loved real account of the lives and deaths of two men, sometimes partners, sometimes not, in the contexts of Sydney and Melbourne in the 70s and 80s. The participants themselves were gay men who lived in Sydney, Melbourne and Auckland over the same period. Ages of the participants ranged from 28 to 55 at the time of interviewing. The choice of the common text, Holding the Man by Timothy Conigrave, was intended to provide a common foundation across generations upon which the participants could frame their thoughts in relation to their own love stories and their experiences with HIV/AIDS. The examination of the responses of the participants focused on inter- and intragenerational differences and similarities, both in the ways these men described their love stories and their experiences of HIV/AIDS. The key feature of all of these narratives is that despite ageing processes, resonances of the Conigrave text could be traced. It could be argued that recency effects, for example, produced the commonality of narrative thread. I argue however, more than this, the commonalities in love stories may point to a commonality of experience of love across generations, the spectre and aftermath of an HIV/AIDS crisis notwithstanding. Additionally, the participants’ responses may indicate the capacity for written stories, both fictional and non-fictional, to inform the readers’ understandings of their own love stories, and in the case of attitudes regarding HIV/AIDS, drive towards larger ideographic understanding.

Download Draft Conference Paper (pdf)