We Are as Mayflies: Difference between revisions

* Robert Jordan's ''[[Wheel of Time]]'' has the Ogier — for them, ninety years or so amounts to young adulthood, while the channelers (magic users) can live as long as six centuries, under the right circumstances.

* The alien creatures in [[H.P. Lovecraft]]'s work tend to be nearly immortal, with lifespans of several millennia. And then there are the [[Eldritch Abomination|Great Old Ones]] and other [[Cosmic Horror|godlike beings]], which are truly immortal. In fact, some of them are actually older than the entire universe!

* For the same reason, Carmilla in the [[Whateley Universe]] looks upon her fellow students differently. After all, she really is a [[Eldritch Abomination|Great Old One]] even if she ''looks'' like a teenager.

* [[Iain Banks|Iain M. Banks']] ''The Algebraist'' has (most) of the species of the galaxy divided up into two groups: the slow and the quick. The quick have human-like life spans, the slow live [[Time Abyss|much, much longer]] (up to a billion years or so). Also invoked when a [[The Culture|Culture]] ship investigates Earth, and the ship tells our narrator:

* Played with in an old sci-fi story where a man is found who has clearly lived for centuries without aging. When asked how old he is the man claims to have forgotten but that it doesn't matter because everyone is like that where he comes from. The narrator's father decides to find this planet of eternal youth but their ship crashes on a different planet, killing the immortal and the father. Eventually the narrator befriends the natives who live for about five years. As the story ends he is in is fifties and when a child (whose entire family line the narrator has known) asks how old he is the narrator realizes the natives don't have a good concept of what fifty years would mean and claims that he has lost track. He leaves, depressed, and the child's mother assures the boy that the narrator is simply immortal.

** Another story with a forgotten title involved an immensely long-lived alien recruiting a team of humans to travel to another planet and help advance the civilization of a sentient species who exist in a blur of speed and whose lifespan is measured in ''hours''. The team quickly learns that being "immortal" is no picnic...

* The Doctor from ''[[Doctor Who]]'', who is over 900 years old. Actually, he looks younger in his later incarnations than he did his earlier ones. One of the [[Tie-in Novel|Tie In Novels]] points out the problems this can cause if a Time Lord ends up on one planet for a long period of time.

** The new series also features an [[Inverted Trope|inversion]]: The Family of Blood, otherwise advanced and powerful aliens, can only live for a few months.

** Also inverted in a way, in that the Doctor, for all his longevity, does not disrespect other races:

'''Doctor''': I think you look like giants. }}

** And let's not forget the Daleks, who are [[Omnicidal Maniac|Omnicidal Maniacs]] who can live for millions of years, with the help of their life support systems.

* In [[Real Life]], some species of tree can live for ''thousands'' of years. The oldest known tree on Earth is Methuselah, which is estimated at 4,841 years old. To put it into perspective, it predates almost all but the very oldest surviving written records, it predates almost all of the surviving religions, and (barely) predates the construction of the pyramids. Before Methuselah claimed the title, Prometheus was the world's oldest tree, at over 5,000 years old, until it was chopped down in 1964. As a protective measure, Methuselah's exact location has not been revealed to the public. The most bizarre part is, Methuselah is still fruitful, producing viable seeds each season.

** At least one other tree in Methuselah's grove has been found to be older, but its exact location was never revealed for the exact same reason.

** King Clone, the creosote bush that's estimated at over 11,000 years old.

** There was a ginkgo tree in Kamakura (at the Hachimanguu Shrine) that was over 2,000 years old. The tree was uprooted and destroyed in a storm in March, 2010.