Immortality vs. Identity

Two of the best immortality novels in the library arrive at the same conclusion from opposite directions: living forever means losing yourself. Zelazny's Conrad in *This Immortal* survives by reinventing who he is every few centuries — he outlives his own identity and replaces it with legend. Haldeman's Mandella in *The Forever War* barely ages at all, but the world around him changes so fast that he becomes a stranger everywhere he goes. Neither author treats immortality as a gift. It's a storage problem — what do you do with a self that has more past than it can carry?