The Man Who Never Grew Young
by Fritz Leiber
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.
“The Man Who Never Grew Young” by Fritz Leiber, in
Night’s Black Agents as by Fritz Leiber, Jr. (Arkham House, 1947).