Good Idea, So-So Execution

The Immortals consists of several linked short stories that James Gunn published in various magazines in the 1950s. The basic premise is that a man named Cartwright has blood that allows him immortality, and a blood transfusion from him every 30 days could keep another person alive indefinitely as well. The stories focus on the rich men who want to find Cartwright, the doctor who wants to synthesize his blood to mass produce, the consequences of Cartwright reproducing and the effects on his ancestors.

As the stories go on, more and more time has passed since the original discovery of Cartwright’s power. We get glimpses of how the healthcare system has changed over the decades. People now sign their whole lives away in order to get the medical care they need. The rich get treated while the poor die off, or go bankrupt and get their organs harvested (like Eric Garcia’s Repo Men). This background fascinated me, much more than the actual hunt for Cartwright, which was kind of dull (there’s this whole love story that really could have been cut). I wanted to know more about how these people live. At one point, a character goes off on this speech about how doctors told the public that the air in the cities was deadly, so all the rich people moved away — leaving the cities full of the dying poor. This was written in the 1950s, but a lot of it rings pretty true in 2015.