Forum: scifi.stackexchange.com
Tags: <story-identification><novel><immortality>
Title: Novel about a parasite/symbiote that causes immortality
Question: All I can really remember about this novel is that at one point a woman gets blown out an airlock and survives, and that the characters in it are not on Earth. There is also a parasite/symbiote that causes immortality.

Answers:
sents: text: This could be the book Crossing The Line .
text: The main character in the series is Shan Frankland.
text: She is infected with an alien parasite/symbiote called the C'naatat that confers immortality.
text: In chapter 22 of the book she voluntarily exits the airlock rather than face capture.
answer_details: author: scifi.stackexchange.com/users/4144/John Rennie
score: 24
sents: text: Perhaps Hyperion by Dan Simmons?
text: It's been a few decades since I read it, and I don't remember any airlocks, but there is a (cross-shaped) parasite called a cruciform which makes the host immortal.
text: After many weeks, Duré steals into their sacred cavern and discovers a finely wrought cross-shaped artwork that predates human spaceflight by millennia.
text: He deduces that they are survivors from a seedship crash centuries earlier who have been infected with cross-shaped organisms called cruciforms that integrate themselves into their host.
text: After death, the cruciform rebuilds the physical body and resurrects them.
text: The price of immortality is that resurrection information is lost, and over time they become unintelligent and androgynous, losing all distinguishing features.
text: When he is seen topless while bathing the Bikura discover he has no cruciform on him.
text: Debating killing him they instead lead him into Hyperion's labyrinth system where he encounters the Shrike and is unknowingly infected with a cruciform.
answer_details: author: scifi.stackexchange.com/users/767/Thomas Padron-McCarthy
score: 5
sents: text: Or indeed, could it be Neal Asher's story "The Engineer" about seriously deep bioengineering in the 1998 anthology
text: The Engineer (reissued in 2006 as
text: The Engineer ReConditioned )?
text: In it Asher's Polity-universe protagonists (a "partial cat-adapt" and her human male sidekick) discover the sporulated form of an extinct race of ancient bioengineers and attempt to revive it.
text: This slow process leads to it biologically assimilating them and amplifying their abilities.
text: Immortality?
text: Well, they manage to survive the blast from a nearby nuke strike.
answer_details: author: scifi.stackexchange.com/users/31393/Lexible
score: 4
sents: text: Hal Clement's "Needle" has an alien symbiont fuse with an Earthling to find an alien criminal, and the alien gives powers to the host.
text: The 1987 movie
text: The Hidden and Star Trek 's Trill race repeat the concept.
text: The original Star Trek episodes "Metamorphosis" and "Is there in truth no beauty" repeat the concept.
answer_details: author: scifi.stackexchange.com/users/70500/user70500
score: 3
sents: text: Sounds kinda like The Million Year Hunt , by Kenneth Bulmer.
text: In it, the protagonist is inhabited by an alien symbiont and sets out to find the symbiont's mate/partner.
text: Towards the end, both the protagonist and his girlfriend are thrown into space, and they only survive due to the symbionts' protection.
text: This list of summaries mentions the symbiont.
text: A friendly alien parasite occupies a human's body, giving him extraordinary powers in order to enlist his aid in tracking down a dangerous enemy.
answer_details: author: scifi.stackexchange.com/users/70462/Nick
score: 2

Summary of the answers:
This could be Crossing The Line; Hyperion  by Dan Simmons; Needle by Hal Clement; or The Million Year Hunt by Kenneth Bulmer.
The title of the book referenced may be one of "Crossing the Line", "Hyperion", "Needle" or "The Million Year Hunt".