Write a science fiction story that explores the nature and consequences of (im)mortality.
The current US president is 81 years old, and his primary political rival is just three years younger. Most of the leaders of the world's largest countries are 70 or older.
A few weeks ago I attended a concert by the legendary blues guitarist Buddy Guy. He told stories about his life, sang a bunch of great songs, and played guitar like there was no tomorrow. Mr. Guy is 87 years old.
What if those people could live forever? Would it be a good thing for the world, or for them? Is mortality a curse, or a blessing? And if we must die someday, what if we could know exactly when that might happen?
Humans and other organisms die because our cells die. First, in a process called senescence, they stop dividing. Eventually, they kill themselves in another process called apoptosis, or programmed cell death. Neither of these are accidental or the result of "wearing out." They are deliberate, regulated biological algorithms that have evolved over eons.
Senescence, in particular, occurs because an explicit, genetic mechanism counts the number of times a cell has divided over its lifetime. When the number of divisions reaches its pre-programmed limit, division (mitosis) ceases. Some scientists believe this mechanism evolved to help us defend against a disease that still plagues us today: cancer, which is runaway cell division caused by toxins or radiation.
Is mortality the ultimate cure for cancer?
Rules
Entries should be submitted in the usual way using the Write for Us submissions link.
Mention the title of the prompt (This Mortal Coil) in the Notes field of the submissions form.
Submissions must be received by August 15 to qualify.
Entries must comply with all the usual SFS Guidelines.
Your work can be horror, romance, dystopian, alien, or whatever, as long as it’s Sci-Fi and addresses the prompt's theme.
Submit only one story for this prompt.
You may continue to submit stories to SFS that are outside the contest, and we encourage you to do so.
If you have more than one story that fits the theme, please submit your best one for the prompt and send us the others as non-theme entries. Also, if the editors feel your theme entry is good enough to publish but does not satisfy the theme requirements, we reserve the right to accept it as a non-theme submission.
After the prompt has ended and all the entrants have been processed (usually before the first day of the following month), we will list and link to the participating stories in a blog post. The editorial staff will choose one story for special mention as the Editors' Choice of the Month.
Exemplars
The premise that immortal creatures, human or otherwise, exist has inspired many great speculative fiction stories. The classic science fiction stories below explore the concept and consequences of death and its imagined absence. Click the links to read a free online version of each story.
Back to Methuselah — George Bernard Shaw, Garrick Theatre, February 1922 Shaw is not one of our familiar grand masters of sci-fi. He was a brilliant Irish playwright, and this is a play, not a short story. In fact, it's a series of five short plays that explore virtually every aspect and consequence of mortality and immortality, from Eden to the year 31,920 A.D. It is most definitely a work of science fiction. It even includes a 30-page preface by Shaw that reads like a scientific treatise on evolution and sociology. Imagine this: Adam and Eve are bored of their immortality until they discover death when they come upon a fawn that has fallen and broken its neck. The serpent does them a favor by explaining how they can finally die while still obeying God's command that they care for the garden forever: by producing offspring!
Life-Line — Robert A. Heinlein, Astounding Science Fiction, August 1939 This was Heinlein's very first published story. He imagines a device that can reliably measure the exact day someone will cease to live. Sounds like a wonderful gift to mankind, doesn't it? Wrong.
The Last Question — Isaac Asimov, Science Fiction Quarterly, November 1956 If you've read any old sci-fi stories, then you've probably seen this one. Asimov suggests that immortal beings, AIs in this case, will inexorably merge with other immortals and, at some point in the far future, become a single universal intelligence: the Cosmic AC. If that happens, he seems to ask, will it be God? “THERE IS AS YET INSUFFICIENT DATA FOR A MEANINGFUL ANSWER.”
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So go ahead, live forever. Or at least long enough to write an engrossing tale for us that explores the meaning and mystery of (im)mortality.
— The Editors
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