Immortal Characters in Fiction

Who are some of the best fleshed out immortal (or at least supernaturally longlived) characters in fiction? I’m not that well read in fantasy and sci fi, but my favorites that I have read include:

Utnapishtim (the flood survivor in Gilgamesh)

Hob Gadling (from “The Sandman” comics- b. in the 14th century and still going strong)

Lazarus Long (if a judge wanted to position a statue of his notebooks in a courthouse or Supreme Court Building or embroidered on his robe I’d have relatively little problem with it)

Duncan MacLeod (of the Highlander TV series- the movies, not so much)

Your picks? (And surely there are some immortal women out there)

Conrad in Roger Zelazny’s This Immortal.

You have to mention Roger Zelazny here, since he specialized in immortal characters, right from his first book, This Immortal. And Zelazny could do better characterization in one short story than Heinlein managed in his whole career combined.

Yeah, yeah, I know. You’re all Heinlein worshipers. I don’t care.

Q, the meddlesome demigod from Star Trek The Next Generation

That’s all I’ve got off the top of my head.

Cool simulpost. :cool:

May the fate of 1000 pains cross your path 1000 times over! How dare you speak against my og!

Hercules from The Legendary Journeys is a possible pick. He was immortalized in Greek myth but I’m not sure if he was in the series… to say they played fast and loose with the mythology there is a bit of an understatement.

Dax from Deep Space Nine is another. Immortality by symbiosis is something you don’t often see and noting the differences in the hosts is interesting.

Ender in Card’s Ender saga? An exceptional but otherwise normal human that’s still alive three thousand years after his birth via time dilation. His being a living monster of historical revisionism was one of my favorite aspects of those books.

I’m proud to be the first to mention Enoch Root, from Neal Stephenson’s Cryptonomicon and Baroque Cycle.

Not one of those serene bastards who cruise through the centuries, but a busy guy who’s resigned to his fate and lives day to day trying to do what’s right for his current set of companions.

I think he’s the prophet Elijah. And Ali from Cryptonomicon never gets a chance to invite him over for dinner. ;j

There are loads of them in Tolkien, though Gandalf is probably the best characterized and even he’s left awfully mysterious. Most of the others are either supporting cast, like Elrond, or end up getting killed just like everyday mortals, such as most of the Noldor aristocracy in the Silmarilion.

To add to the Zelazny list, I can hardly believe I’m the first to mention the Amberites.

Can they really be classed as immortal, though? Eric, Brand, Bleys, Dierdre, Oberon all end up dead, IIRC.

Wowbagger the Infinitely Prolonged :smiley:

Terry Pratchett’s Death has a lot of personality, although “fleshed-out” is probably not the best way to describe him.

James Thurber’s Walter Mitty, an ordinary guy who continually daydreamed that he was in exciting situations. Danny Kaye played him on screen. It was a long time ago, but reviewers still occasionally talk about a “Mittyesque” character.

I seem to have misunderstood the OP. I thought you meant characters who were remembered long after the tale was told.

In the Lord of the Rings books, the elves were immortal, and Gandalf had been around for hundreds of years.

In Shakespeare, you’ve got Puck (my favorite :)), Oberon, and Titania, and later Ariel.

For my money, though, immortal characters don’t get much better than the Messrs. Crowley and Aziraphale.

So I have to be the first to bring up the dreck that is Anne Rice? So be it, then.

In her book The Mummy (which is entertaining, but not great) Ramses, Cleopatra, and a second woman who is Ramses’s lover all become immortal. Ramses and his lover are mentioned somewhere in the Interview with a Vampire series.

But, knowing Rice, their immortality might not be a forever type of thing. Other “immortal” characters of hers (vampires, namely) die, tire of life, or go insane, if not otherwise destroyed.

Bleys died? Man, it’s been to long since I read the books, I don’t remember Bleys dying (although with Amber, it’s always an open question whether anyone really died).

To get to my real point though, I think there is a separate class of immortal, which is one who would not die but for death by violent or otherwise unnatural means. I don’t recall any Amberites dying of disease or old age. If they were not immortal, they were so near immortal (but for the ability to be killed unnaturally) as to be immortal.

If Amberites are not immortal because they can end up dead, than many of the others listed are also not immortal (e.g. Duncan MacLeod).

Also from LotR, we have various other ainur and fey (all of the wizards, Sauron, the Balrog, Shelob and her momma Ungoliant, etc.). And then there’s Tom Bombadil, about whom nobody knows very much, but even Galadriel (who’s over twenty thousand years old) refers to as “Eldest”.

In Asimov’s later novels, we learn that R. Daneel Olivaw has persisted as a sort of guardian of humanity for many millenia But he has the advantage of being a robot.

Speaking of guardians of humanity, we could include any of the Protectors from Niven’s Known Space, or the Arisians from Doc Smith’s Lensman books.

Also from Known Space we have Lucas Launcelot Garner, who isn’t actually immortal and doesn’t have anything in particular going for him, but who just happens to be born at the right time to catch the wave of advances in gerontology, and keeps on living just long enough to take advantage of the next life-extending breakthrough. Later characters in Known Space, of course, are born with those breakthroughs already in place, but Garner’s case seems more noteworthy.

If we’re including folklore, there’s the Wandering Jew, who scorned Jesus on the way to the Crucifiction, and is now cursed to walk the world until Judgement Day.

In Feist’s Riftwar books, there’s the great wizard Macros the Black, who’s been a major mover and shaker on many worlds, and turns out to be (it’s implied) the son of the afore-mentioned Wandering Jew, who shares his curse.

The Incarnations in Piers Anthony’s Incarnations of Immortality have a very limited sort of immortality: Each of them can “die”, but each only in his or her own manner.

Kane (as in Cain and Abel) from the books by Karl Edward Wagner. One of the first humans, a couple of his stories take place during World War II and in the 1980s, where,IIRC, he’s a dealer of crack cocaine.

Casca Rufio Longinus from the books by Barry Sadler. Casca is the Roman soldier who speared Jesus on the cross and is cursed to wander the earth until Jesus returns.

It’s been a long time since I read the books, but I believe Tarzan became immortal somewhere in the series of books.

Say what? I quit reading the ones about the son. Did he kill them off?