Objectivity
November 9th, 2006, 08:31 AM
I'm hoping someone can help me. I'm trying to rediscover a triology of books that I read probably about 20 years ago. I'm pretty sure the author's name began with a letter toward the end of the alphabet.
The first book focuses on two brothers, a couple of years apart in age. It's discovered that the government has been adding something to food that makes people immortal if they take it before they hit puberty. Society goes into an uproar and all children are moved to camps to protect them. While in the camp, a cook tries to kill the children by mixing glass into their food (this is a small nugget that I remember for some reason). Testing shows one brother becomes immortal, another doesn't because he was too old.
The non-immortal brother dies in the second book and the immortal one is involved in politics (I think). I remember the non-immortal is one of the last of the non-immortals to die. He creates a living tomb to remind people of who he was (a lot of non-immortals do it).
It's also during this book that it's learned that those who become immortal lose their creativity and artistic abilties, so to keep the culture alive children are no longer given the drug until right before puberty and allowed to decide whether they want to be immortal or be creative (if they have that ability).
I think the third book had to do with the immortal brother leading a group into space. I never liked that one as much.
In my mind, parts of the second book remind me of Orson Scott Card's short story Unaccompanied Sonata, and parts of Haldeman's Worlds Apart.
I'm hoping to find it to see how much of it I remember and how much I filled in in my mind.
The first book focuses on two brothers, a couple of years apart in age. It's discovered that the government has been adding something to food that makes people immortal if they take it before they hit puberty. Society goes into an uproar and all children are moved to camps to protect them. While in the camp, a cook tries to kill the children by mixing glass into their food (this is a small nugget that I remember for some reason). Testing shows one brother becomes immortal, another doesn't because he was too old.
The non-immortal brother dies in the second book and the immortal one is involved in politics (I think). I remember the non-immortal is one of the last of the non-immortals to die. He creates a living tomb to remind people of who he was (a lot of non-immortals do it).
It's also during this book that it's learned that those who become immortal lose their creativity and artistic abilties, so to keep the culture alive children are no longer given the drug until right before puberty and allowed to decide whether they want to be immortal or be creative (if they have that ability).
I think the third book had to do with the immortal brother leading a group into space. I never liked that one as much.
In my mind, parts of the second book remind me of Orson Scott Card's short story Unaccompanied Sonata, and parts of Haldeman's Worlds Apart.
I'm hoping to find it to see how much of it I remember and how much I filled in in my mind.