Did you know? Scientists have come up with several pretty effective ways to make laboratory animals live longer, and someday, some of these things may very well help you live longer, too. For example:

Starvation works: As long as they get sufficient nutrients, rodents whose caloric intake is severely restricted can live 30 to 40 percent longer than their litter-mates who are free-fed. But if you find caloric restriction tedious, and most people do, there’s always…

Drugs: Rapamycin, given to transplant recipients to suppress their immune systems so their bodies don’t reject the transplanted organs, can significantly increase lifespan in mice. Resveratrol, a compound found in red wine, also extends lifespan in some lower organisms. (The long-term effects of the resveratrol in wine on human lifespan are not as clear-cut. Believe me, I’ve looked into this.) Or, if you’re really hard-core, you can try…

Genetic modification, which has already been employed with some success in a rodent model. And if you’re a really, really trusting sort, you could consider…

Cryonic preservation, in which your body is flash-frozen at the moment of death and revived at some unknown later date, once medical science has figured out how to cure whatever it is that killed you. People are actually doing this, although the field is new-ish and I’m not aware of anyone who has been successfully brought back yet. (And let us not forget what happened to Walt Disney… allegedly.)

Eventually, one or more of these interventions will be proven effective in humans, and death will become a whole lot more optional for a lot of people. And what then? Will humanity all live… and live… and live happily ever after? Or -- as is suggested in Drew Magary’s stylish new novel The Postmortal, reviewed here this month -- will disaster be the direct and unavoidable result?

Immortality (or, more accurately, extreme longevity) has been explored by numerous genre authors -- more than we could possibly discuss here. And Magary’s scenario (societal breakdown with a side order of pandemic disease and global thermonuclear warfare) is certainly one of the more extreme visions out there. Some authors have been downright chipper about the prospect, while others have treated relative immortality as commonplace and scarcely worth mentioning.

Shall we take a closer look at some possible results of extreme life-extension?

Immortality causes serious societal and/or personal issues, but life goes on. So to speak.

Some authors acknowledge the difficult social and political issues that would crop up in a death-optional society but manage not to lead their worlds all the way to the brink of destruction. For example, in Elizabeth Moon’s Familias Regnant series (also known as the Heris Serrano books, the Serrano Legacy, the Esmay Suiza books, etc.), the planets of the Familias Regnant have access to rejuvenation technologies that allow people to live a very long time. The result has been a glut of older people in senior military and business positions who have absolutely no incentive to move aside for young up-and-comers, a situation informally known as the “diamond ceiling.” Frustration with this state of affairs leads to a devastating galactic war. In the end, one of the principal characters, a young woman named Brun Meagher, accepts a deal proffered by the head of her Family: If (and only if) she declines rejuvenation she will become the heir, eventually to inherit considerable power and wealth. The implication is that she will be instrumental in untangling some of her society’s knottier problems… while she lives, anyway.

Lois McMaster Bujold’s CryoBurn depicts a society whose economy is based almost entirely on the cryonics industry. When Imperial Auditor Miles Vorkosigan visits, he finds that some of the cryo-corps have been dealing less than honestly with some of their customers… but the fallout from this revelation is, unfortunately, given short shrift in favor of a shocking plot twist specific to Miles and his family.

In Orson Scott Card’s Worthing Saga, effective immortality is achieved simply by… well… sleeping. Suspended animation technology gives those who can afford it the luxury of awakening for short periods to check in with the future, Rip Van Winkle-like, and then drifting back off into nothingness for the next century or so. It sounds idyllic, and yet the effective outcome of this way of life is to make that life much less compelling for all involved. After all, why bother with little things like procreating when you won’t be awake to see your children grow, and don’t need to worry about having someone to carry on your legacy, when you don’t plan to ever have to leave one behind?

Card also explored this theme in his Enderverse books, in which Ender Wiggin and his sister Valentine achieve very, very long lives simply by spending a good deal of their time traveling faster than the speed of light. They, themselves, age hardly at all, while the universe around them has time to vilify Ender’s youthful, planet-saving shenanigans in killing off an entire sentient species, deify their brother Peter’s sociopathic megalomania, and generally become entirely alien to these two lost souls, adrift among the stars.

Indeed, at the individual level, immortality can result in a certain melancholy. For example, the elves in J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings trilogy are immortal and many of them have a permanent Sad because they remember every bad thing that has ever happened to them. And in Natalie Babbitt’s children’s classic Tuck Everlasting, the Tuck family is immortal, but they find that they are no longer really living:

"You can't have living without dying. So you can't call it living, what we got. We just are, we just be, like rocks beside the road."

Immortality, or at least extreme longevity, is the “new normal,” and it’s not really that big a deal.

In the best of all possible worlds, people live super-long, super-healthy lives, and it’s all good. For example, in Julian May’s Galactic Milieu Trilogy, rejuvenation becomes universally available and is widely adopted after the Great Intervention, i.e. First Contact with several advanced alien societies that generously share their technologies with us. Of course, there are extenuating circumstances -- the Intervention opens the galaxy up to humanity, and we have countless new planets to colonize and limitless opportunities to realize our apparently bottomless potential. (Even so, humanity comes within a whisper of completely messing things up. That’s what the trilogy is about, if you haven’t read it.)

People who don’t like life in the Milieu, and there are some, can enter into voluntary exile through Professor Guderian’s Time-Gate to the Pliocene Era, as chronicled in the precursor to the Milieu books, The Saga of Pliocene Exile. And in that series, even some of the Exiles are rejuvenates. In Volume 1, The Many-Colored Land, Guderian’s widow entertainingly squares off with an elderly but very vigorous paleontologist:

“You are quick with a jest, Monsieur le Professeur,” said Madame tartly. “Perhaps the old fossil hunter will tell us his age? “A hundred and thirty-three.” “Then you are two years my senior,” she retorted, “and I will expect you to render good advice to our company as a result of your vast experience. As I lay before you my grand design, the plan for the liberation of humanity, give us your invaluable counsel. Correct any youthful impulsiveness that I may show.”

In David Weber’s Honor Harrington series, “prolong” treatments have extended the lifespan of most humans to upwards of two hundred years -- with the potential for even greater age to come, as the science matures -- and while this does occasionally stall things for up and coming officers in the Manticoran Space Navy with which we mostly deal, frequent and bloody wars against an array of ruthless enemies fielding superior numbers have pretty much made that a redundant concern. Meanwhile, twenty books into the series, Honor is now in her sixties but doesn’t look a day over twenty-five.

Also, in pretty much every vampire book ever written, the vampires enjoy a very long lifespan, assuming they can avoid decapitation or a stake through the heart -- which, let’s face it, is not usually a problem for most people. The downside of their functionally immortal state may be touched upon -- for example, Lyndsay Sands’ Argeneau Vampires sometimes comment on how boring regular food is, after hundreds of years -- but it’s usually not the focus of the book. Although, that said, Paranormal Romance vamps do tend to spend a good deal of their time repining over their undead eternities, with no immortal beloved with whom to share their forever. To wit:

“I’ve been waiting a century to marry you, Miss Swan.”

-- Edward Cullen, Breaking Dawn

The immortal/postmortal becomes a god, or like a god.

Sometimes, immortality is a gift given to very few, and while it may or may not be a permanent state, it does come with considerable power attached. In Piers Anthony’s Incarnations of Immortality series, there are five Incarnations: Death, Nature, Time, War, and Fate -- seven if you count G(o)od and (D)Evil. The Offices of Death et al. are immortal, but their holders are not. In On a Pale Horse, the first book in the series, sad-sack Zane assumes the Office of Death when he panics during a suicide attempt and shoots the previous Death in the face. Zane is still mortal, but as long as he’s acting as Death, he can’t die (unless he gets careless, like his predecessor did).

Going back to May’s Milieu trilogy for a minute, one of the First Families of the Milieu, the Remillards of Concord, New Hampshire, carry an “immortality” gene complex, meaning that they remain relatively youthful and healthy even without the benefits of rejuvenation. The patriarch, Denis, maintains the appearance of a young graduate student for over a hundred years until he, um, moves on to his next adventure, and the narrator, Rogatien “Rogi” Remillard, celebrates his hundred and sixty-eighth birthday in Book 2, Diamond Mask. However, the condition is expressed most powerfully in Marc Remillard, the most gifted and morally conflicted member of the family. After leading a rebellion against the Milieu that results in the deaths of billions of people, Marc escapes -- first through the time-gate to the Pliocene Era, and then to the faraway Duat Galaxy. He raises the beings of Duat to metapsychic operancy and full Union, and then joins the noncorporeal Lylmik race, sheds his body, and becomes sort of a galactic shepherd, helping numerous alien races develop their innate metapsychic powers. As the Lylmik leader known as Atoning Unifex, he befriends Rogi Remillard (after a fashion) and forces Rogi to complete one final and vitally important task before finally Crossing Over at the age of six million years and change.

And wizards, warlocks, sorcerers and the like are always getting to ridiculously advanced ages, and acquiring along the way enormous amounts of power, often becoming myths and legends within their own lifetimes. Gandalf is basically as old as the world in Lord of the Rings, David Eddings’ Belgarath the Sorcerer is 7,000 years old at the beginning of The Belgariad, and even the gifted folks of J. K. Rowling’s Wizarding World age more slowly than we mere Muggles… though the quest for unassailable power and immortality, there, was shown to be a bad thing, mostly since it was Voldemort who spent a good deal of the series attempting to achieve it.

Elsewhere, Leto II of House Atreides ruled over his Empire for a peaceful and prosperous -- if dull -- three and a half millennia, as detailed in Frank Herbert’s God Emperor of Dune… and yet, he had to merge his body with that of a giant sandworm in order to do it. So… yeah. Godlike longevity can come at a hefty price.

The immortal/postmortal is already a god.

Literary gods and goddesses are usually immortal, often pesky, and their embodiments feature heavily in a good deal of Fantasy, everywhere from Elizabeth Moon’s classic trilogy The Deed of Paksenarrion to Mercedes Lackey’s Valdemar series to, of course, Rick Riordan’s Percy Jackson series, which brought all the fun of the Greek Pantheon to today’s youngsters through tales of their plentiful illegitimate offspring. Meanwhile, Riordan’s latest series, The Kane Chronicles, is firmly rooted in Egyptian mythology, and even has the cat-goddess Bast as one of its main protagonists.

Guy Gavriel Kay’s Fionavar Tapestry also features an entire pantheon of immortals. However, it’s worth noting that for Kay, it turns out that “immortal” can be a somewhat relative term. Rakoth Maugrim, god of all that is evil and nasty, can’t be killed directly, but if he uses a specific implement to kill without love in his heart, he will die. You can pretty well guess how things shake out in the climax of the Tapestry.

So there you have it: Immortality may rock or it may suck, depending on whom you ask. Me, I want to live to be a hundred; and when I wake up on the morning of my hundredth birthday, assuming I make it that long, I’m sure my first words will be “I’m not ready to go yet.” But the knowledge that it’s not altogether up to me reminds me every day to take the excellent advice offered in Tuck Everlasting:

Don't be afraid of death; be afraid of an unlived life. You don't have to live forever, you just have to live.

  -- Kate Nagy (with thanks to Rachel Hyland)