The Involuntary Immortals

by Rog Phillips

A Golden Age science fiction masterpiece from a Hugo Award nominee writer! Rog Phillips' The Involuntary Immortals, the story of a woman who finds herself outliving her lovers--and the incredible peril she faces when she sets out to discover the source of her involuntary immortality. Helen Ranston was one of The Involuntary Immortals. In Hugo Award nominee Rog Phillips' classic science fiction novel, Helen Ranston discovers her own daughter, Agnes, thinks she is a witch or vampire--for Agnes is forty, and her father, sixty-seven. But Helen still looks twenty, and has never aged during her daughter's entire life. But, even Agnes doesn't suspect the truth--that Helen is over a hundred years old and has no idea why she is apparently immortal. With her daughter vowing vengeance, Helen knows she will have to start her life over, under a new identity--as she has so often before. Then she meets the young man with the figure eight pin on his collar. Looking into his eyes, Helen discovers they are the eves of a much older man. When Eric Trent says, "You never thought there would be others," he catapults Helen into the midst a lethal three-corner cat-and-mouse game, the pawn of ruthless schemers who know how to kill immortals--and are willing to kill every one of them, in order to control the priceless secret of selling eternal life! Can Helen keep her immortality or will she lose it--and her life along with it? Cover J. L. "Frankie" Hill

Nook

First published January 1, 2002

Reviews

[Barry Haworth · Rating 2 out of 5]

I came across this story in a the December 1949 edition of Fantastic Adventures (which I found here. The premise is an intriguing one. The story begins with a woman whose husband dies after they have been married for 40 years. Despite his age she is still young, as young as when they first married. Further, this is the third time this has happened - the third husband in succession that she has outlived while remaining young. As she leaves to start a new life she discovers that there are others like herself, and she joins in their quest to find out what is is that makes them immortal, and how.

As I said the story starts well and has some clever ideas in it. Unfortunately it makes a number of unlikely and abrupt twists and turns, and there are many characters whose actions and motivations do not make a lot of sense. I wanted to like this story, and mostly enjoyed the ending, but do not really think I can recommend it.