Call Me Stan: A Tragedy in Three Millennia (Essential Prose, 188) - Softcover

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

K.R. Wilson was born in Calgary in 1958. He has a bachelor’s degree in music (BMus) from the University of Calgary, with a major in theory and composition. He also has a law degree (LLB). He lives in the Toronto area with his wife and daughter. He has been, among other things, a music teacher, a delivery truck driver, and an office supplies salesman. He sings in a fine 100-voice concert choir. He likes British television, unreliable narrators, and avant garde music.

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Names. They're so malleable.

I was originally called Ishtanu, after one of our sun gods. We had a lot of gods. Some were ours; some co-opted from our vassals. We had a lot of vassals, too.

My life started out like any other bronze age teenager’s. Shepherding. Arranged marriage. Military draft. It got more complicated when I realized I didn’t die. And it got a lot more complicated when other people realized it. Pre-modern society may have embraced a lot of theoretical immortals, but it wasn’t all that tolerant of actual immortality. Modern society isn’t noticeably better.

I cope by changing identities every 20 years or so. That creates its own complications, of course. You think you have trouble keeping track of your online passwords? Try keeping track, over thousands of years, of which name you’re using for each particular eyeblink of your life. So I try to keep a common element. I've been Drustan, Constantius, Constanze. You get the idea. Sometimes that isn't possible, so I've also been Olaf, Gestas, Jagdish, and so on. I was even Ishmael for a while. But don't call me that.