Second Childhood: When Eternity Grows Old, Childhood Begins Again

Immortality solved every problem humanity once feared—except one. After nearly six thousand years of service, achievement, and survival, Andrew Young has reached a point where time no longer adds meaning. His friends are gone, his interests are exhausted, and even danger has lost its edge. When death is no longer an option, he searches for a different way to stop living without dying.

Denied permission to end his life, Young pursues something far stranger. He begins dismantling adulthood itself, piece by piece, rebuilding a world scaled to innocence and sensation rather than memory and obligation. What starts as a deliberate experiment soon becomes something more fragile and dangerous, as the boundary between intention and belief begins to blur. The question is no longer whether the past can be erased, but whether a mind that has carried centuries can truly let go without breaking.

Second Childhood is one of Clifford D. Simak’s most quietly unsettling stories, turning away from spectacle to focus on an intensely personal crisis. It asks what remains when experience becomes a burden instead of a gift, and whether renewal is possible without destruction. The tension is intimate and relentless: how far can someone go backward before there is nothing left to return?

Clifford D. Simak published science fiction for more than half a century, with stories appearing regularly in Astounding Science Fiction, Galaxy, and other major magazines. He is best known for works such as City, Way Station, and Time and Again, stories that often slow science fiction down and aim it inward. In Second Childhood, Simak brings that same humane focus to a future that has conquered death, then dares to ask what living actually means when life has no natural end.