Fritz Leiber, Jr.

variant of Fritz Leiber
Short Story

The Man Who Never Grew Young

  • by Fritz Leiber
  • in Night’s Black Agents as by Fritz Leiber, Jr. (Arkham House, 1947)

Without knowing why, our narrator describes his life as a man who stays the same for millennia, even as others, one-by-one, are disinterred, slowly grow younger and younger.

The story is soft-spoken but moving, and for me, it was a good complement to T.H. White’s backward-time-traveler, Merlyn.
It is the same in all we do. Our houses grow new and we dismantle them and stow the materials inconspicuously away, in mine and quarry, forest and field. Our clothes grow new and we put them off. And we grow new and forget and blindly seek a mother.
A stylized pen-and-ink drawing of a cloaked man on a horse with a
                silhouette of Saturn in the background.
  • Eloi Gold Medal
  • Fantasy
  • Experimental
  • Definite Time Travel