only happen to mortals who gain immortality. Beings born with immortality (such as deities, demigods and races with "limited immortality") are usually quite adjusted to their long lives, though some may feel sorrow at the passing of mortal friends, but they still continue on. Some immortals may also watch over mortal relations (either related to or descended from them), occasionally offering help when needed. In legend, most famously in Wagner's opera The Flying Dutchman, a ship's captain is cursed with immortality after attempting to sail around the Cape of Good Hope in a terrible storm. He is doomed to sail around the Cape forever. In Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels, some of the inhabitants of the island of Immortals (near Japan) don't die, but they age and become ill, demented, and a nuisance to themselves and those surrounding them. Swift presents immortality as a curse rather than a blessing. In general, a theme seen with many variations, is the notion of an essential world weariness akin to extreme exhaustion for which death is the only relief. This is inescapable when immortality is defined as (half) infinite life. Immortality defined as finite but arbitrarily long per the desire to exist does not, as a definition, suffer this limitation. When a person is tired of life, even death is shut off to them, creating an endless torture. The 2018 science fiction TV series Ad Vitam explored the social impact of biological immortality. Undeath The undead are fictional people who have died and still maintain some aspects of life. In many examples, the undead are immune to aging or even heal at an accelerated rate. Dracula is one of the most famous examples of the undead. Science fiction Immortality can be achieved in fiction through scientifically plausible means. Extraterrestrial life might be immortal or it might be able to give immortality to humans. Immortality is also achieved in many examples by replacing the mortal human body by machines. Regeneration There are many examples of immortality in fiction where a character is vulnerable to death and injury in the normal way but possesses an extraordinary capacity for recovery. The long-running British science-fiction series Doctor Who focuses on a character called the Doctor, a member of the alien Time Lord race, who can "regenerate" instead of dying or aging; however, rather than simply healing wounds, this results in a Time Lord's entire physical appearance changing when fatally wounded or terminally sick. Most Time Lords are only capable of doing so twelve times before finally dying for good, but the Doctor and his friend-turned-foe the Master have each gone beyond this limit, the Master possessing others before the events of the Time War led to him and the Doctor being granted a new cycle of regenerations for helping their people in the conflict. Spiritual There are numerous works of fantasy fiction dealing with spiritual immortality in the form of reincarnation or a world of the dead. Fictional immortals The list is in chronological order for the first appearance of the fictional character. The Wandering Jew appears in a series of legends, starting in the 13th century, about a Jewish man who is made immortal in the time of Jesus, and cursed to wander the Earth until the second coming. 1706-1710. In Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels, the title character encounters the human struldbruggs on the island of Luggnagg. They are immortal, but continue to age, and are considered legally dead when they turn 80. La Belle Dame sans Merci a knight seduces what he thinks is a beautiful woman; he finds out too late she is a vampirelike