Betsy Curtis 14 min read

Immortality may be only a matter of definition, or of point of view, as this answer to Arthur C. Clarke's famous 'The Star' proposes, through the story of Father Phillip Burt.

Betsy Curtis's 1956 story is a thoughtful hard-SF and social-SF reply to one of the most celebrated SF stories ever written. Sharp, provocative golden-age SF. Read it for an eloquent counter-argument to Clarke's 'The Star,' offering a wholly new idea about faith, sacrifice, and the divine.

In its time

Published in 1956, during the 1950s, post-war optimism meets cold war anxiety.

Reading it

14 min read (a short story, a single idea, delivered and gone).

Illustrated by

John Giunta