Want to be immortal, I mean?
This isn't anything to do with my aeons-old vampire fetish, but rather a book R lent me to peruse while I was sick and recuperating at home last week: The Book of Skulls by Robert Silverberg. I'm not a die-hard science fiction enthusiast, but despite being tagged under Sci-Fi Masterworks, I'd classify this book as more occult and mysticism, with a lot of study-of-human-nature thrown in.
The premise is this: 4 boys in their final year of college set out on a cross-country trip to Arizona to locate a sect shrouded in secrecy and mystery: The Brotherhood of the Skulls. According to ancient but reliable texts discovered by one of the boys, the Brotherhood offers the gift of immortality to those who seek it, but with a few catches: those questing immortality must present themselves in groups of 4; they must stay the course of the initiation without informing the outside world; and of the 4 only 2 will survive "for the price of life is always a life". Sinister stuff, no? Half the book is comprised of their journey there, and the thoughts of each one - I loved how the author alternated between each boy and allowed us a detailed (and often disturbing) travel through each one's psyche.
The book had me alternating my views on whom I wanted to live or die, and I think that disturbed me more than anything - playing God even in that small measure, judging and weighing each of those fictional characters' lives and decisions and flaws and failures. Stupid, I know, but the tone of the book is such that it makes you question so many, many things - including yourself. Brilliantly written. Any book that gets me to question beyond who, what, where, when and why deserves all the awards and accolades out there.
The end lived up to my expectations, but all through the book, I kept asking myself: would I? Given the chance, would I WANT immortality? For me, the answer is no: simply because I wouldn't want to live out forever without the people I love by my side. The book (and R) expostulates the myriad possibilities : discovering new things, learning every day, mastering new crafts, greeting the dawn of new centuries - new millennia even! To which my simple answer is: what is the point of all that if you don't have people to share it with you? Give me a few good decades with everyone I love and I'll gladly forego forever.
What about you? What if you could choose to live forever? Would you?
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