12 great science fiction and fantasy stories that deal with death

Of course, The Body is in there:

Arguably the greatest television episode about death ever, the episode where Buffy's mom dies is stark and uncompromising in forcing us to face the loss Buffy is going through. I've had friends watch this episode to cope with the real-life deaths of their mothers or other loved ones. With no music playing in the episode, there's nothing to take you away from the reality of what's happened, and peripheral characters like Tara (who talks about the death of her own mother) and Anya (who doesn't know how to behave, or what it all means) help to illuminate the huge gaping hole in Buffy's life.

God. Even reading the fruit punch speech has me sobbing at my desk.

There have been a number of Doctor Who episodes that have made me cry. Like River's death in The Forest of the Dead or the tenth Doctor's death/regeneration (like when he says he's going to get his reward, which is to help his friends).

I don't know if I'm just more emotional these days, or if Doctor Who knows what buttons of mine to press....

That is an impressive list.

I'd add the SG-1 episode "Lifeboat" where Daniel is possessed by a dozen souls, including a little boy who has to be sacrificed to oblivion. I weep every single time.

Oh, oh! And while fictionalized, yet not at all fiction, the Matthew Broderick movie Project X highlights how cruel humans can be in the pursuit of death. Guts me so badly, I can only see it every few years, but can replay it in my mind, scene for scene in between viewings.

"It's always sudden."

Honestly, there's never been a real life death close to me since The Body where that phrase hasn't gone through my head.

Honestly, there's never been a real life death close to me since The Body where that phrase hasn't gone through my head.

My father's death was sudden in the plain sense. Unexpected. Until I heard Tara saying, "It's always sudden," I sort of had an unreasonable prejudice about deaths that come after a long illness, that somehow they were easier to grieve because there is warning. Hearing that undid that thinking in me. It has made me more compassionate.

12 great science fiction and fantasy stories that deal with death

Heh, I can't help but think that at some point, Machine of Death: A collection of stories about people who know how they will die will be on such a list. It's tailor-made!

And while fictionalized, yet not at all fiction, the Matthew Broderick movie Project X highlights how cruel humans can be in the pursuit of death. Guts me so badly, I can only see it every few years, but can replay it in my mind, scene for scene in between viewings.

Is that the one with the chimpanzee? I think I remember that.

When I reporter right out of school, I spent part of every day doing what was a rite of passage for reporters back in the stone age: I wrote obits. One of the first ones I wrote included "died suddenly," and the assistant city editor told me to never write that, because all death is sudden.

I'd put Clifford Simak's Why Call Them Back from Heaven? on that list.

Is that the one with the chimpanzee? I think I remember that.

That's the one. While packaged as a teen comedy...which completely mystified me...it illustrated the Air Force experiment which irradiated chimpanzees who had been trained to pilot a flight simulator. The proposed goal was to see how long fighter pilots would continue to fly once they knew they had been irradiated.

See the problem there?

The chimps kept flying because that is what they had been trained to do. They did not have the cognitive ability to imagine an alternative, nor to conclude that they were dying.

I'm not generally anti-military, but that program caused me to curse a lot. The Air Force wanted to know how long a pilot could keep flying after irradiation, without taking into account whether or not a pilot WOULD keep flying.

News is out that Caprica is being cancelled. SIGH.

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