Yearly Archives: 2008

Super powers are usually presented as all up-side. But there are always drawbacks to any ability, and this week I got to thinking about what powers would have their pluses outweighed by their minuses.

Here are my thoughts on them, I'm curious to hear how you parse out the choices.

• Immortality: The drawback here is having to see all of your loved ones, all of your enemies, everything you ever knew or loved turn to dust in what will feel like the blink of an eye. That would suck. And you'd want some way to make sure that not only would you be immortal, but immortally young. Living forever as a shriveled, disease-ridden, pain-wracked husk is not exactly optimal.
• Precognition (ability to see the future): If you know how everyone around you -- including you -- is going to die, wouldn't that ruin your day? And if you knew in advance what everyone was going to say or do, with no surprises ever, life it seems would hardly be worth living.
• Super strength: I would be terrified of crushing my loved ones when I went in to hug them. Or of killing someone accidentally with an incautious swing of the arms. I'd feel like a bull in a china shop, constantly on edge.
• Telepathy: I'm pretty sure we're all better off not knowing what we're all really thinking.
• Time travel: The Butterfly Effect would be a huge pain in the butt here, as I'd come back to my regular timeline only to discover that something I did in the past accidentally killed off all of humanity. Oops. No thanks, I can do without that level of responsibility.