Scythe (Arc of a Scythe, #1)

by Neal Shusterman

What must life have been like in the Age of Mortality? Full of passions, both good and bad. Fear giving rise to faith. Despair giving meaning to elation. They say even the winters were colder and the summers were warmer in those days.

We all dream of immortality. Even if you say you don’t want to live forever, in one way or another you do, whether it’s faith in an afterlife, or the thought of living on through your children, or the works you leave behind. We want to know that we’ve left a meaningful footprint behind. But what happens when we never lift our foot? Physical immortality will have substantial consequences. I wanted to explore the ones that weren’t so obvious. The loss of passion, the fading of faith, the narrowing of the band of human emotion. The winter of our discontent is no longer made glorious summer, because the winter isn’t so bad, and the summer isn’t so glorious. What would a world without passion and despair be like? Would art be dull? Would thrill-seekers search for more absurd ways to get their hearts pumping? Would people try to recapture the religion, by inventing a post-mortal one? When you ask enough questions, suddenly you’ve found that you’ve built a world.