Friday, January 27, 2012

Who wants to live forever? Vampire immortality

Well I'm a couple of days late but it's been a busy week. Of course I can't forget about my loyal fans :) So continuing to think about vampires and their powers I wanted to discuss one of their biggest, immortality/eternal youth.

First though a message from our sponsors (namely me and Tasha): My book The Newfoundland Vampire will be on in April 2012 (working hard now on editing) and Tasha’s books (the second one I’ve read and highly recommend) are out now. Tasha also recently said on Twitter she's working on a handbook and I've already started book 2 of mine, so expect lots from both of us in the future.

Live forever? HELL YEAH! At least that's my initial reaction. Most everyone has at least some fear of death and would love nothing else than to avoid it entirely but what lengths would you really go to for life eternal? Would you be able to drink blood from the living? Would you kill other vampires? Would you kill humans? Friends? Relatives?

In my book I give the vampires the traditional eternal life/youth power but not without it's price. Joseph, the main character, is turned into a vampire without his knoweldge or permission and while he does find great comfort in the notion that he will live forever, he comes to realize that his normal human life is quickly coming to an end. He learns that vampires don't always get along and that he has to fight to survive. More importantly to sustain his life he must drink the blood of the living and while he often settles for wildlife (or livestock) the temptation of the exquistite human blood gnaws at his resolve. Regret and the knowledge that you killed someone would never go away but you certainly find ways to cope with them, especially with superhuman abilities.

I think the worst part of immortality would be knowing that you will outlive everyone you know, they would get old and die and you would remain the same. Of course that leads to the other dilemma, who would you turn? Sure some friends and realtives would love you for it but what about if you significant other hated you for all eternity? What if you made an enemy that would hunt you down or torture you for all of time? Cassandra (the other main character in my book) faces a very similar situation to this.

Obviously there would be a best part to life eternal. Aside from the superficial fact that you would never have to look older, the incredible benefit of being to take as much time as you want to do anything would be immensely satisfying. Imagine taking 5, 10 even 20 years to write the perfect book (some writers actually do this, or at least try to ;) and knowing that you could master this formula forever. Or any skill/hobbby/past-time you could literally spend an eternity on. Imagine knowing that you coudl travel the world/universe and experience every important event in history from now until...

I think that ulimately if the blood list didn't change you than the longer you lived would make you immensely detached from soceity/human nature. Unless you had some kind of immortal partner it would become an incredibly lonely life. The thought of being with someone for hundreds or more years though would be the ultimate test of any relationship.

For me I still answer yes, it would be tough I'm sure but eternal life/youth is a price I'd pay. Now I just need to find a vampire...;-) Have a nice weekend everyone, I better get back to editing =)




5 comments:

Penumbra Publishing said...

So, after you eat everyone and master everything you ever wanted to do, what's next? Eternal boredom...?

A lot of books and movies try to deal with this concept. I love lists. Can you add to this?

Groundhog Day (Bill Murray's not immortal but he gets a new redo every day until he gets it right.)

Highlander (Supposedly there can only be one. Dude! Grab your sword!)

Bicentennial Man (I thought it was called Millennium Man! An artificial man suffers unrequited love.)

There's more, but I'm outta room!

Pat

Charles O'Keefe said...

Well I wouldn't be eating anyone (I'd still be a twisted sort of vegatarian). I don't think you'd ever run out of things to do. The world is always changing and there would always be new people to meet and history to be a part of. Once you were done with earth you could explore the universe. As long as there was a supply of blood a vampire would be fine in space. I'll have to think about the list. Lots of vampire movies deal with immortality but they're too obvious :)

Natasha Larry said...

Lol. This is great. Im old school, so I'm a fan of death and aging ;) I agree with Pat, eventually immortality would suck.

Natasha Larry said...

Lol. This is great. Im old school, so I'm a fan of death and aging ;) I agree with Pat, eventually immortality would suck.

Charles O'Keefe said...

Fan of death and aging? What about Allison? and Sasha? They're not fans ;) I think aging physically is the worst part of life. Sure mentally you get a little wiser (hopefully ;) but death and aging scare the crap out of me. I'd still give immortality a try, it would HAVE to suck less than getting old and frail :-)