Talk:Immortality in fiction

Did you know nomination

The following is an archived discussion of the DYK nomination of the article below. Please do not modify this page. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as this nomination's talk page, the article's talk page or Wikipedia talk:Did you know), unless there is consensus to re-open the discussion at this page. No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was: promoted by Theleekycauldron (talk) 06:39, 30 September 2021 (UTC)

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Tablet of the Epic of Gilgamesh

• ... that the concept of immortality has been featured in fiction since the oldest known work of fiction, the Epic of Gilgamesh (tablet pictured)? Source: "The oldest written story known is a more than 5,000-year-old Sumerian tale of a hero in search of immortality—the story of Gilgamesh the King."

• Comment: This is my second DYK.

Improved to Good Article status by TompaDompa (talk). Self-nominated at 01:55, 14 September 2021 (UTC).

General: Article is new enough and long enough
New enough: Long enough:

Policy: Article is sourced, neutral, and free of copyright problems
Adequate sourcing: Neutral: Free of copyright violations, plagiarism, and close paraphrasing:

Hook: Hook has been verified by provided inline citation
Cited: Interesting:

Image: Image is freely licensed, used in the article, and clear at 100px.
Freely licensed: Used in article: Clear at 100px:

QPQ: None required.

Overall: Article is new enough, long enough, well-sourced, neutral and plagiarism-free. Hook is interesting and cited in article. Pic is free, used and clear. QPQ not needed. Pamzeis (talk) 04:52, 14 September 2021 (UTC)

Modified ALT0 to T:DYK/P7 without image

Apparent immortality

I miss a reference to The Phantom, who is believed to be immortal but is actually a dynasty of crimefighters. Hasn't it been dealt with in the studies? --Error (talk) 21:02, 10 October 2021 (UTC)

Not an angle I came across in the sources I found while rewriting this article, no. Though admittedly those sources mostly focus on science fiction and fantasy. TompaDompa (talk) 22:41, 10 October 2021 (UTC)

Suggestions for improvement to FA standard

I think the article needs be expanded for a more global perspective. When I searched Google Scholar, two of the top results are non-Western: Revolutionary Experiments: The Quest for Immortality in Bolshevik Science and Fiction and Reimagining Daoist Alchemy, Decolonizing Transhumanism: the Fantasy of Immortality Cultivation in Twenty-first Century China. As far as I can tell, the article currently does not discuss Soviet or Chinese fiction at all, or Africa.

The sentence starting "In medieval Europe, the Christian legend of the Wandering Jew emerged..." is too long and I think it should be broken up.

An additional issue is that your reference format does not provide page ranges for a lot of sources. Ideally for verifiability the ranges are kept to 1-3 pages; that's not a hard and fast rule but reviewers may question if a page range like 307–340 is verifiable, especially if you're consulting the print copy of the work. In order to cite specific pages, you can use {{rp}} or switch the reference format to sfn referencing (used for most FACs these days, for an example see my FA Greek case.) (t · c) buidhe 11:41, 29 October 2021 (UTC)

@Buidhe: Thank you for your comments. Revolutionary Experiments: The Quest for Immortality in Bolshevik Science and Fiction was rather helpful, and I've only taken a quick look at it so far so it might be even more helpful than I realize (I'm currently working my way through Death and the Serpent: Immortality in Science Fiction and Fantasy to see how much useful content can be found therein to expand the article with, so I'll get back to Revolutionary Experiments when I'm done with that). The other source didn't really have anything to say about the concept of immortality in fiction; it's about a fantasy subgenre that the author calls "immortality cultivation fiction". I did however manage to locate a different source that does (briefly) discuss the concept of immortality in Chinese fiction literature, and I've added a sentence about that to the article. For the most part however, the sources I found discussing immortality in Chinese literature do it in the context of philosophical (mostly Taoist) writing, not fiction. I'll keep looking for additional sources to get a more global perspective.

I split the sentence in two. There was a semicolon there anyway, so I replaced it with a period.

I'm not particularly a fan of using either {{rp}} or {{sfn}}, frankly. I find that the former results in quite a bit of clutter, and the latter seems inappropriate to me when some of the sources are neither books nor journal articles. I'll think about it, but I'll probably stick with the current format. Anyway, I added page numbers to a couple of references that lacked them. Two main reasons for occasionally extensive page ranges are citing a specific chapter in a book (and providing the page range for the chapter as a whole) and citing the same source multiple times and not wishing to have duplicate references where only the page numbers are different. If there are objections to indicating larger page ranges than are strictly speaking necessary I could change that. TompaDompa (talk) 01:47, 1 November 2021 (UTC)

Sources

I had a look through my sf references, and you already cite several of the articles I found. The only two things I came up with which you might find useful are Bleiler's Science-Fiction: The Gernsback Years and Barron's Anatomy of Wonder. Bleiler has an index of stories by method of obtaining immortality on p. 652. Barron lists a couple of dozen sf titles that relate to immortality, and provides brief synopses. I think both of these are too specific unless you need more specific commentary about a particular title, in which case let me know and I'll see what I can dig up. I also have the McGill Survey of Modern Fantasy Literature and Survey of Science Fiction Literature volumes, and could look up anything you're interested in in those. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 14:06, 29 October 2021 (UTC)

My suggestions to you

@TompaDompa: Please note.

• Fiction = "The species of literature which is concerned with the narration of imaginary events and the portraiture of imaginary characters; fictitious composition. Now usually, prose novels and stories collectively (OED),"
• Non-fiction = "Prose writing other than fiction, such as history, biography, and reference works, esp. that which is concerned with the narrative depiction of factual events; the genre comprising this. (OED),"
• but Epic = "A poem, typically derived from ancient oral tradition, which celebrates in the form of a continuous narrative the achievements of one or more heroic characters of history or legend. (Typical representatives of the genre are the Iliad and Odyssey.) (OED)"
• Legend = "A traditional story sometimes popularly regarded as historical but not authenticated." and Myth = "A traditional story, typically involving supernatural beings or forces, which embodies and provides an explanation, aetiology, or justification for something such as the early history of a society, a religious belief or ritual, or a natural phenomenon." (OED)

Please read the Britannica article on "Epic of Gilgamesh." The word "fiction" is not used. In other words, "fiction" and "non-fiction" are categories applied to modern (generally) prose literature. Ancient literature had epics, drama (including lyric), fables, and the like, but not fiction and non-fiction. The term "non-fiction" did not exist before the mid- or late-19th century. "Fiction" may have been used in some specialist sense for Gilgamesh, but it is not common usage.

A point to note is that at FAC, you may get help in the brass-tacks of the FAC criteria, ... well, ... all accept 1d (due weight) because that requires expertise in a topic area, which by and large is absent at FAC (with a few notable exceptions). A very large number of successful FACs are in fact increasingly articles that have a judiciously narrowed scope, in which issues of due weight do not arise and in which comprehensiveness (1.b.) is easy to achieve. Your sources (the tertiary ones) are mainly in the realm of Science Fiction. I am urging you to rename the article, "Immortality in Science Fiction." You will feel more confident about your subject matter. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 15:47, 29 October 2021 (UTC)

I think we have to go with the divisions used by the best sources. Clute & Grant's Encyclopedia of Fantasy, for example, which is cited in this article, has an entry on immortality which implies that limiting the discussion to science fiction isn't necessary. It also has an entry for Gilgamesh, which tells me that discussions of Gilgamesh might be in scope for this article too, though as it happens Clute & Grant don't mention Gilgamesh in their discussion of immortality -- they start with William Godwin's 1799 novel St. Leon. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 16:12, 29 October 2021 (UTC)

@TompaDompa: As you may have noticed, in my post on WT:FAC I did suggest that you rename your article, "Immortality in science fiction" or "Immortality in science fiction and fantasy." I left out the latter in my post here, because I wanted to suggest something clearly delimited. Fantasy is less precisely defined. Is Kingsley's The Water Babies fantasy? Some people think it is; most though think it is children's literature. It has "intimations of immortality" though. Similarly, is Gilgamesh fiction? The prevailing term of use in scholarly literature is "epic" or "epic poem." It has 3,600 lines of verse. (See an old standby on it at the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago.) But if you open yourself up to calling Gilgamesh fiction, how will you deal with the Mahabharata, another epic, the world's longest at 200,000 lines of verse, with many immortal characters. I'm suggesting that you plant yourself on a turf where the fence is secure and clearly visible (i.e. does not fade into the horizon, figuratively speaking). I think I've said what I had to. I wish you luck. Best, Fowler&fowler«Talk» 18:30, 29 October 2021 (UTC)

Please, don't rename it "Immortality in Science Fiction", even that is contrary to our guidelines, it should be "Immortality in science fiction" if you decide to follow that path. This isn't German-language Wikipedia after all. And please don't be dissuaded by the insinuations above of "narrow scope", that's just pure personal opinion and has literally no bearing on your initial question over whether you could be mentored and this article could reach FA standard. The Rambling Man (Keep wearing the mask...) 16:45, 29 October 2021 (UTC)

• I see a big problem in that in ancient literature immortality more or less = divinity, and in Western medieval literature extraordinary longevity will normally/always be terminated by the Last Judgement, which I think was the case for the earlier Wandering Jew renditions. I'd cut the earlier stuff & go for Immortality in modern fiction with a start date after 1600 or later. For Hindu, Buddhist and other religious traditions, we are all immortal in one sense, so I don't know if it works for them. I had similar issues doing Personification, which I steered around. Even restricted like that, this looks some way off FA status to me - maybe calling it a day at GA is best. Johnbod (talk) 17:56, 29 October 2021 (UTC)

• Sorry, Johnbod, I didn't see your post. No real disagreement. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 18:33, 29 October 2021 (UTC)