"The Island of the Immortals" is a short story by Ursula K. Le Guin, published in volume 70 of Amazing Stories in 1998.
It follows a nameless traveler who becomes curious about the Yendian Plane tourist destination after discovering that its residents have the secret to immortality, only to discover something she'd never expected.
The Island of the Immortals provides examples of:
- Age Without Youth: The Immortal is implied to have had a slower version of this. While his lack of features is due to the various accidents his body has suffered, he does have long, matted white hair and was described as a once handsome young man who made his living across many lifetimes by hunting in the marshes two or three thousand years ago, suggesting that he eventually began to age despite his inability to die.
- Ambiguous Gender: The Immortal has been so severely mutilated by past injuries that it can no longer be identified as either sex. The villager woman does explain that it was once a handsome young man, but by this point, it is barely a person, which is why she refers to it as "it."
- Ambiguous Situation:
- The narrator never uncovers how the few residents that achieved immortality managed to do so by the bite of the flies, with the story ending with her musing on whether the flies were the causes, or if there was one single immortal fly that had a chance to infect people.
- How The Immortals turn into diamonds after being buried for a few thousand years is never explained, with even the narrator wondering how it's possible. She does notice a black crust at the nub of The Immortal's arm, suggesting that this is the end state of immortals regardless of whether they're buried.
- Whether or not Postwand became immortal after visiting the Yendian Plane. He didn't wear a gauze when visiting and is said to have been bitten up by the flies, and the narrators ship captain said there hadn't been a case of immortality in 100 or more years. He visited the Yendian Plane 160 years before the narrator did, making it likely that he was the latest victim, although it's never clarified either way.
- And I Must Scream:
- The immortal that the narrator meets is in a terrible state, explaining the reason that no one wants to become immortal after visiting the Yendian Plane. It lacks a Healing Factor that would allow it to recover from more severe injuries, which means that any injury it has suffered in the past becomes a permanent part of it, such as losing its legs in an earthquake or being so badly burned in an accident that it is no longer recognizable as either sex. To make matters worse for it, it's also deaf and blind, being unable to perceive it's surroundings, let alone what's happening to it, and has been reduced to a tourist attraction to help the island generate revenue.
- The "diamonds" that people take home as souvenirs are the immortals' fate after being buried alive for thousands of years. And they're burned alive in every sense of the term, because they're not only unable to die from oxygen deprivation, but also can't die starving and thirsty, meaning they're just suffering down there until they become presumably still sentient rocks.
- Apathetic Citizens: The story places a major emphasis on how lifeless and miserable the citizens of the Yenedian Plane are, with the only one seeming to have a little life to her being the tourist woman who introduces the narrator to The Immortal. Justified, however, given the dismal living conditions of the island, the ever present chance of being bitten by the flies that could infect them with immortality, as well as the suffering they witness the immortal residents live through on a daily basis. Tourists who visit the island leave just as miserable as the residents despite spending less time there.
- Buried Alive: When The Immortals reach an advanced age, the island's residents bury them in the ground so that they can become diamonds after a few thousand years. They're still alive throughout the process of changing, feeling hunger and thirst but are unable to die from it.
- Downer Ending: The narrator got some of the answers that she was looking for by journeying to the Yendian Plane, emphasis on "some," but the suffering of the Immortal she encountered will last indefinitely, and will likely become the fate of the other people who were unfortunate enough to be bitten by the flies and "gifted" with immortality.
- Fate Worse than Death: Being immortal is perceived as such, which is why people are no longer interested in becoming immortal after visiting the Yendian Plane and witnessing the outcome for themselves. One look at the current immortal, who is blind, deaf, legless, and scarred beyond recognition by past wounds that should have killed him (and would have killed any normal person) but cannot because of his deathlessness, is enough to dissuade them. Even the villagers themselves try to avoid becoming immortal if they can help it, walking around head to toe in gauzes avoid the risk of being bitten by the immortality inducing flies.
- Foreshadowing:
- When the narrator asks about the islands immortals, the boatman begins talking about the diamonds in the ground, which visitors take from the island as souvenirs, until the narrator corrects him that that wasn't what she meant. At the end of the story, the narrator discovers that the diamonds are immortals, or at least what happens to them after they're buried.
- Another hint to the immortals being the diamonds was how the narrator noticed that the Immortals severed arm has black crust at the nub, although she doesn't immediately question it, instead preferring to look away from it.
- I Was Quite a Looker: According to the legends the villager woman heard, the Immortal was once a handsome young man during the early days of his immortality, which makes his current state even more tragic.
- Nice Girl: The villager woman, in a "She means well and is making the best of a bad situation" kind of way. She cares for the Immortal out of duty to her family, and she refused to bury it when a scientist told her to because she understands the suffering it would endure after being buried alive for thousands of years with no chance of death. She does use it as a tourist attraction to generate revenue for the island, and she dehumanizes it a little when she talks about it, but she also recognizes how sad its situation is and tries to focus on the positives, such as the enjoyment her children get out of feeding it and how the money helps them.
- No Name Given: The characters presumably have names, but no one in the cast is named, not even the narrator herself, nor does the narrator ever ask. The most they get is their titles.
- Shout-Out: When thinking about what Island of the Immortals will be like, the narrator brings up the Laputans from Gulliver's Travels, although she gets some details about them wrong due to her poor memory of what she read as a child.
- Town with a Dark Secret: Or island, in this case. Nothing about the island is known to anyone who isn't in the travel industry, and while the narrator can learn a little bit from the people she meets, almost everyone is extremely cryptic about what's going on there. Even in libraries, beyond one book written by Postward and his experience with the island, it's clear that the rest of the world is trying to bury the island in the past despite it containing the secret to immortality and probably valuable and unique black diamonds, leaving the narrator confused as to why it's not a more popular subject and why the developed world hasn't tried to reverse engineer a cure for the negative side effects of immortality, if there are any. It isn't until she visits the island herself that she sees why everyone is behaving the way they do. The cost of immortality is so horrific that the fascination quickly fades and no one wants anything to do with it.
- Who Wants to Live Forever?: The narrator points out that people have strived for immortality because they are afraid of death, and after discovering an island where people have achieved immortality, others have gone there in search of it, only to return home depressed and discouraging others to visit. As we find out, the cost of immortality, or at least the version granted by the Yendian plane as seen in The Immortal, which is a blind, deaf, mutilated husk of a person after a long life with no end in sight to its suffering due to its inability to die or be killed, is what leads people to conclude that living forever isn't worth it.
