IMMORTALITY

Imagine living forever. Here and now, not in the afterlife.

Eternally youthful, no physical limitations of any kind, impervious to injury and disease. No restrictions, no dangers. Try as you may, you simply cannot die. Anything you’d like to do, to be or to have… it all comes to pass, without fail. You cannot miss.

Imagine yourself as immortal, indestructible, a super-human living right here on planet Earth. Any takers?

Should be a pretty long line to sign up for that one, right? Death, disease and getting old are on no one’s bucket list. World travel would be much more appealing, to most. What would you spend your unlimited time doing? “Anything I like,” you say, “I would see the world, as a matter of fact. And why not? I have all the time in it! Seeing as I’m not going to get sick, nothing can harm me in any way, why not live it up? Do it all, taste it all, have it all. Twice, if I enjoyed it the first time around.” Undoubtedly, throughout all this you would amass a great deal of knowledge; that is, if you are paying the slightest bit of attention. There’s a good deal rolling by while you see the world, again… and again. Learning dozens of languages, knowing how everything works, and blah, blah. What would you do with all that information? Really?

Let me throw one more thought at you. Suppose you could fly, become invisible, change your appearance, use your thoughts to influence others. “Now you’re talkin’!” you say, “sounds like I’m some kinda superhero! Cool. Nobody’s gonna mess with me!” So, say you’ve been around for two or three millennia, you great big Uber-Human, you. You’ve had most any position of power you aspired to, asserted your authority for whatever cause, noble or otherwise, at whim. At what point does it all become a bore? Would the phrase, been there, done that, begin to grate on you a bit?

With two, maybe three-thousand years behind you and no end in sight? Sure, new things to learn in the future, more to do, more to have, but when would you stop trying to fill yourself up? “No way would I let that happen!” You protest, “I’m a benevolent-type demigod.” Ok, I’ll grant you that. Now you’re the world’s servant, doing everything for everybody 24/7. You’ve been around forever, everyone knows it and your life is not your own.

“Hmm, that’s no good either,” you say, “guess I’ll just have to keep my nature a secret then. Live life on my terms.” Great. But with whom would you live your life?

Any relationship you begin couldn’t last much longer than 20 years or so, as your significant other begins to age while you mysteriously do not. Either one of you would begin to resent that. And what if there was genuine love between you? What then?

Is immortality a blessing or a curse? This is one of the central questions addressed in the new novel “Superman Unveiled,” from author Luis Herrera. I have had the pleasure of narrating this novel into audiobook format as my second collaboration with Luis, who is a masterful writer. Our first volume together, “Lucas Black, a novel,” also got me thinking in directions I had not predicted.

Superman Unveiled is not a typical Superman tale, nor is it standard comic book fare. There’s a lot of real thought here; an honest look at why it is we revere superheroes like we do or rather if we should do so, at all. If you can escape into the Superman character you’re familiar with, allow yourself a different view of this legend and his story. This novel will take you some places you may not have expected to go, and the trip will be worth it.

Along the way you will contrast immortality to mortality. And the perfectly imperfect humanity we are all blessed with being, to godlikeness. What is better?

That is... if we are wise enough to see it.

DAVID BOSCO Narrator – Superman Unveiled