History Literature / ThisImmortal

''This Immortal'', originally serialized as ''...And Call Me Conrad'' in 1965, is a ScienceFiction novel by Creator/RogerZelazny. In 1966, it won the UsefulNotes/HugoAward alongside Frank Herbert's ''Literature/{{Dune}}''.

* BringHelpBack: When [[spoiler:Conrad and Hasan are stuck in a Hot Spot while tied to stone pillars with no way to free themselves]], Conrad manages to send Bortan to fetch help. It works, although only after a false start -- Bortan originally thought that any hands would do, and offered them one torn off of a nearby body.
* CanisMajor: Bortan, Conrad's dog he once found as a puppy and raised, never imagining it would grow as big as a horse -- with plates at his sides and other mutations -- or live for as long as thirty years and counting. If not for natural causes (mutation through radiation), Bortan would qualify as a {{Hellhound}}, and Conrad even calls him that repeatedly.
* CannibalTribe: The Kouretes, a tribe of half-human mutants led officially by Procrustes and inofficially by would-be shaman Moreby from Taler. They live in wooden shacks in the mountains near a Hot Spot and engage in cannibalism of whoever they manage to capture. [[IronicName Their name is actually ironic]] - [[https://www.theoi.com/Georgikos/Kouretes.html the Kouretes come from a Greek myth]] who ''prevented'' cannibalism by dancing around [[Myth/ClassicalMythology the infant Zeus]] while clashing their spears and shields together to drown out his crying and prevent his father Cronus from finding and eating him.
* CapturedByCannibals: The group is taken captive by the [[CannibalTribe Kouretes]], a tribe of half-human mutants living near a a Hot Spot in the mountains of Greece. They don't bother with niceties, but pretend their captives could [[WinYourFreedom win their freedom]] through a DuelToTheDeath against the Dead Man, whom the Kouretes worship. [[spoiler:While Hasan fights the Dead Man, the others try to break free, and through a combined effort they manage to both kill the Dead Man and flee.]]

** At first, Conrad tries to prevent Myshtigo's murder because protecting the latter is [[PunchClockHero part his job]], but also because he sees no reason to let it happen until he's found proof otherwise. He also tries to protect everyone, even Hasan, when the group is [[spoiler:caught by cannibals]] by offering himself to [[spoiler:fight the Dead Man]], and tries to save Myshtigo from a boadile even though letting the animal eat the latter would solve many problems.

--> '''Conrad:''' "Congratulations. You've won yourself a Do-It-Yourself Hero Kit, complete with monster."

* EntitledBastard: Everyone assumes Cort Myshtigo to be one. He's from an influential family, acts rudely, ignores whoever he wants, disregards Conrad's instructions and still expects the latter to save him and guard his life. [[spoiler:It is later revealed that Myshtigo was an superb actor and considered this assignment his last great role, all while he was dying of some incurable disease.]]
* EvilutionaryBiologist: Downplayed. George Emmet is not the villain of the piece, but lives purely [[ForScience for science]] and exhibits a LackOfEmpathy, which causes him to do whatever he thinks would improve a species without considering what the moral implications would be. When, at the end of the book, his wife Ellen is pregnant again, he wants to try embryosurgery to create a child capable of breathing underwater... Ellen isn't having any of that, though.

* FaunsAndSatyrs: There are satyrs in inland Greece, although they are the result of genetic mutations caused by nuclear pollution and superstition, with people abandoning their mutant newborns in the forest and some of those babies growing up to become satyrs. Satyrs are said to be of subhuman, limited intelligence and to love dance and pipe playing, but to otherwise be very shy.

* HumanoidAliens: The Vegans. They are blue-skinned, amber-eyed (or at least Cort Myshtigo is) and the vents for their lungs can be found of their torso. Additionally, their bodies are covered in patterns invisible to humans, enabling Vegans to identified each other's clan by pattern.

** Conrad's son Jason is preternaturally long-lived, but does not inherit the ImmortalityBeginsAtTwenty genes.
* ImNotAHeroIm: Conrad's reaction when confronted with Diane's adoration towards Konstantin Karaghiosis is to reject it, although he later uses it to extend the amount of time he has to think about Myshtigo's fate. It is also PlayedForLaughs when they check into a hotel in Athens only for Conrad to get the suite, a room famous for having been Konstantin Karaghiosis' headquarters during the Radpol Rebellion -- pretty much everything in that room is adorned with a plaque commemorating the occasion:
--> ''The stain on this wall was caused by a bottle of beverage, hurled across the room by Konstantin Karaghiosis, in celebration of the bombing of Madagascar.''\\

* LackOfEmpathy: EvilutionaryBiologist George exhibits a lack of sympathy both towards people and especially towards other living creatures, e.g. he dissects the last living dog on Earth just because he can and ForScience

* MagicalFlutist: At one point in the story, the group encounters a group of satyrs in the forest, prompting Conrad to produce shepherd's pipes out of nowhere and causing a dancing frenzy among the satyrs with his music. At the end of the book, Myshtigo theorises that Conrad may be the [[Myth/GreekMythology god Pan]] in disguise when recalling that incident.

* MayflyDecemberRomance: Conrad Nomikos and his newly-wed wife Cassandra. The former is [[TheAgeless functionally immortal]] with an unspecified number of past identities while the latter is a twenty-year-old woman.

* NoHoldsBarredBeatdown: A temporarily-AxeCrazy Conrad is tricked into fighting Hasan's sparring robot [[spoiler: after its failsafes have been removed.]]

* OurCentaursAreDifferent: They are only mentioned in passing, but there are centaurs in the mountains of Greece and they are the product of genetic mutation caused by nuclear pollution.

* AWorldHalfFull: Most of Earth is a nuclear waste land inhabited by half-human mutants and without a proper government, [[HumansNeedAliens dependent on help from and trade with the Vegan Combine]], with babies being born deformed even in the civilized areas. Yet Radpol and the Returnist movement work toward making it a better place to live again and towards inciting more humans to come back to Earth.

* WorldOfCardboardSpeech: Hasan recounts that Conrad--while Karaghiosis--once gave him one. Played with, because when Conrad remembers it, it was actually a DespairSpeech.

* CannibalTribe: The Kouretes, a tribe of half-human mutants led officially by Procrustes and inofficially by would-be shaman Moreby from Taler. They live in wooden shacks in the mountains near a Hot Spot and engage in cannibalism of whoever they manage to capture.

* DisneyDeath: [[spoiler:Cassandra allegedly dies in an earthquake which lays waste to the general area she and Conrad live in. It turns out she was out on a boat during the quake and miraculously survived.]]

** Conrad challenges [[spoiler:Hasan the Arab]] to a duel to the death (after having payed his death tax and acquiered a duel permit, of course) in order to [[spoiler:stop him from killing Myshtigo]]. The dual is fought using slingshots but [[spoiler:is interrupted by a group of Kouretes, so no one actually dies]].

* KlingonsLoveShakespeare: Vegans love Coca Cola, especially the recently redicovered original recipe.

** The boadile is a mix of boa and crocodile, although there's some debate over which scientific cathegory they belong into or how many legs they have.

* WorldsStrongestMan: Conrad is ''immensely'' strong; [[FamedInStory strong enough to break the neck of a spiderbat that had picked him up, and swim back to shore.]] Hasan, the best assassin on Earth, flat-out tells Conrad that he fears his strength and would absolutely not fight him hand to hand.

* ConsummateActor: It turns out that Myshtigo's real talent is acting.

* WorldsStrongestMan: Conrad is ''immensely'' strong....[[FamedInStory strong enough to break the neck of a spiderbat that had picked him up, and swim back to shore.]] Hasan, the best assassin on Earth, flat-out tells Conrad that he fears his strength and would absolutely not fight him hand to hand.

* LivingForeverIsNoBigDeal: This seems to be Conrad's approach to live as he's never known any other, and he even seems to have no issue with his relatives and descendants dying before him.

* BringHelpBack: When [[spoiler:Conrad and Hasan are stuck in a Hot Spot while tied to stone pillars with no way to free themselves]], Conrad manages send Bortan to fetch help. (after a false start. Bortan originally thought that any hands would do, and offered them one torn off of a nearby body...)

* ChronicHeroSyndrome: At first, Conrad tries to prevent Myshtigo's murder because protecting the latter is [[PunchClockHero part his job]], but also because he sees no reason to let it happen until he's found proof otherwise. He also tries to protect everyone, even Hasan, when the group is [[spoiler:caught by cannibals]] by offering himself to [[spoiler:fight the Dead Man]], and tries to save Myshtigo from a boadile even though letting the animal eat the latter would solve many problems.
** More or less name-dropped when Hasan insists on fighting [[spoiler: The Dead Man]]:
--> '''Conrad''': "Congratulations. You've won yourself a Do-It-Yourself Hero Kit, complete with monster."

* YourTerroristsAreOurFreedomFighters: The Returnist movement. One the one hand, their aim was to regain Earth's autonomy and rebuild the planet, on the other hand, to kee the Vegans from building ''vacation resorts'' on Earth, they were not above using nukes. It is why Madagascar became utterly uninhabitable.

* BringHelpBack: When [[spoiler:Conrad and Hasan are stuck in a Hot Spot while tied to stone pillars with no way to free themselves]], Conrad manages to talk his dog Bortan into going and fetching help. Or at least he hopes the dog understood him.

* {{Badass}}:
** Hasan the Assassin is the last professional contract killer on Earth. He burnt Madagascar.
** Cassandra mentions hearing that a man was once snatched off a dock by a spiderbat and survived. He broke its neck with his hands, fell into the ocean, and swam ashore, and later became the head of the [[YourTerroristsAreOurFreedomFighters Radpol.]] [[spoiler: Conrad's only comment is, "that wasn't the way it had happened."]]

* ImmortalProcreationClause: Of the variety where the immortal, in this case Conrad, ''can'' and ''does'' have offspring, but they only marginally benefit from that, living slightly longer than normal but not unsuly so, thus causing him to watch them die. Conrad, however, does not seem particularly fazed by that as [[LivingForeverIsNoBigDeal that's just how things are]].

** Spiderbats, imported from offplanet, are exactly that: a mix of spiders and bats, [[GiantFlyer able to fly and grow big enough to carry a grown man]].

* ReasonableAuthorityFigure: Tatram Yshtigo, Cort Myshtigo's grandfather, is -- according to Phil -- 'an altruistic administrator of services to the public' and very much aware of the problems with Earth's dependency on the Vegan Combine. [[spoiler:He hatches the plan of sending Cort Myshtigo to Earth to survey whether it could possibly govern itself, then arranges things thus that Conrad Nomikos end up in charge -- reasoning that with someone as long-lived and honourable as Conrad there's a good chance that Earth will become habitable again in the long run.]]

* MagicalFlutist: At one point in the story, the group encounters a group of satyrs in the forest, prompting Conrad to produce shepherd's pipes out of nowhere and causing a dancing frenzy among the satyrs with his music. At the end of the book, Myshtigo theorises that Conrad may be the [[GreekMythology god Pan]] in disguise when recalling that incident.

-> "Nothing is cheaper than past glories."
--> '''Conrad Nomikos'''

* TheProudElite: Myshtigo comes off as an cold and arrogant EntitledBastard who flaunts his family's influence, as well as his own as a wealthy and influential galacto-journalist, but he shows surprising insight into the cultural differences between Vegans and humans as well as into the personalities of those around him. [[spoiler:He also shows surprising depth by being able to play that role ''and'' see through Conrad's motivations while dying of an incurable desease. He also shows some surprising humor in his last letter to Conrad.]]

* NothingPersonal: After Hasan [[spoiler:tries to kill Conrad]], he assures him that it's nothing personal -- the latter ist just in the way of Hasan completing his job of [[spoiler:killing Cort Myshtigo]].

* NotTooDeadToSaveTheDay: [[spoiler:Cassandra]] arrives just in time in the end to shoot the Black Beast that attacks Conrad, Hasan, Ellen and George at Phil's impromptu funeral.

** The boadile is a mix of boa and crocodile, although there's some debate over which scientific cathegory they belong into ot how many legs they have.

* MagicalFlutist: At one point in the story, the group encounters a group of satyrs in the forest, prompting Conrad to produce shepherd's pipes out of nowhere and causing a dancing frenzy among the satyrs with his music. At the end of the book, Myshtigo theorises that Conrads may be the god Pan in disguise when recalling that incident.

* LaResistance: Radpol used to be this when it was founded and led by Konstantin Karaghiosis, Conrad's former identity. Their aim was to prevent the [[GovernmentInExile Earth government]] from selling Earth's entire habitable area to the Vegans for resort building, to regain Earth's autonomy and to encite the humans living on Taler to return and help rebuild Earth -- something that came to be called the Returnist movement. They were, however, not above [[YourTerroristsAreOurFreedomFighters using heavy artillery and even nukes to achieve that goal]].

* KnowWhenToFoldEm: The reasoning behind Conrad's leaving his identity as Konstantin Karaghiosis and the Returnist movement behind was that there comes a point when one's achieved what one could achieve and it's time to move on. Dos Santos and especially Diane, who figure's out Conrad's former identity, disagree.

* ImNotAHeroIm: Conrad's reaction when confronted with Diane's adoration towards Konstantin Karaghiosis is to reject it, although he later uses it to extend the amount of time he has to think about Myshtigo's fate. It is also PlayedForLaughs when they check into a hotel in Athens only for Conrad to get the suite, a room famous for having been Konstantin Karaghiosis' headquarters during the Radpol Rebellion -- pretty much anything in that room is adorned with a plaque along the lines of ''Konstantin Karaghiosis sat on this chair.''

* ImNotAHeroIm: Conrad's reaction when confronted with Diane's adoration towards Konstantin Karaghiosis is to reject it, although he later uses it to extent the time he has to think about Myshtigo's fate. It is also PlayedForLaughs when they check into a hotel in Athens only for Conrad to get the suite, a room famous for having been Konstantin Karaghiosis' headquarters during the Radpol Rebellion -- pretty much anything in that room is adorned with a plaque along the lines of ''Konstantin Karaghiosis sat on this chair.''

* FaunsAndSatyrs: There are satyrs in inland Greece, although they are the result of genetic mustations caused by nuclear pollution and superstition, with people abandoning their mutant newborns in the forest and some of those babies growing up to become satyrs. Satyrs are said to be of subhuman, limited intelligence and to love dance and pipe playing, but to otherwise be very shy.

** When captured by the [[CannibalTribe Kouretes]], the group is given the option that one of them fight the Dead Man in a dual to the death to win all of their freedom. Moreby is very confident that whoever fights will lose, as that's what always happens.

* CapturedByCannibals: The group is taken captive by the [[CannibalTribe Kouretes]], a tribe of half-human mutants living near a a Hot Spot in the mountains in Greece. They don't bother with niceties, but pretend their captives could [[WinYourFreedom win their freedom]] through a DuelToTheDeath against the Dead Man, whom the Kouretes worship. [[spoiler:While Hasan fights the Dead Man, the others try to break free, and through a combined effort they manage to both kill teh Dead Man and flee.]]

* BringHelpBack: When [[spoiler:Conrad and Hasan are stuck in a Hot Spot while tied to stone pillars with no way to free themselves]], Conrad managed to somehow convince his dog Bortan to go and fetch help Or at least he hopes the dog understood him.

* FanOfThePast: The Vegans turn out to be fascinated with human history, as they've become bored with themselves. Especially high caste Vegans delight in puzzling over how the great pyramids were built or who actually wrote [[Creator/WilliamShakespeare Shakespeare's]] plays. Cort MYshtigo claims to be on Earth for this very reason -- to write a travel book about Earth's historical sites.