Clifford D. Simak 29 min read

Achieving immortality is only half the problem; the other half is living with it once it's inescapable. 'God, how tired a man can get of living,' says Andrew Young, petitioning for the right to die.

Clifford D. Simak's 1951 story is a thoughtful, humane hard-SF and social-SF meditation on endless life. Warm, wise, quietly profound golden-age SF. Read it for vintage Simak, a gentle, deeply felt tale of a man weary of deathlessness, seeking a way to feel young, and mortal, again.

In its time

Published in 1951, during the 1950s, post-war optimism meets cold war anxiety.

Reading it

29 min read (a novelette, room for a turn or two).

Illustrated by

Don Hunter