Lester Del Rey 24 min read

Nearly two centuries of habit carry the chairman of Exodus Corporation through his morning ritual, until, alone in his office, he slumps gasping, dreading not being last but being the first.

Lester del Rey's 1956 story is a thoughtful, melancholy social-SF space opera of near-immortality. Sharp, poignant golden-age SF. Read it for a story where humanity has conquered aging but not its subtler tolls, and a long-lived executive confronts a horror the deathless never anticipated.

In its time

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

Reading it

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

Illustrated by

Johns