Letter to a Phoenix

"Letter to a Phoenix" is a science fiction short story by American writer Fredric Brown, about immortality. It was first published in Astounding Science Fiction in August 1949.

Plot summary

A 180,000-year-old man writes a letter to humanity as a whole, explaining the lessons he has learned while observing the rise and fall of multiple civilizations.

Reception

Literary scholar Jack Seabrook has described it as "(t)hought-provoking rather than exciting" and "perhaps (the) best" of Brown's stories focusing on "social or political commentary".[1] James Nicoll, however, writing in 2018, felt that the story "has not aged well."[2]

Vernor Vinge has said that he was "fascinated" by the story, and that it was the direct inspiration for the 1975 story "The Peddler's Apprentice" which he co-wrote with his then-wife, Joan D. Vinge.[3]

gollark: Real time conversation rate is maybe 40 WPM which is, according to my calculator, about 25 times faster than that, so there may be difficulties.
gollark: Obviously that isn't very fast and you'd want to run the candles at a greater baud rate or put some in parallel.
gollark: If the candle can switch between "on" and "off" once a second, you can receive about a word per 40 seconds using standard ASCII.
gollark: Computer science shows us that that doesn't actually matter.
gollark: You could just receive that information via candles, faster.

References
  1. Martians and Misplaced Clues: The Life and Work of Fredric Brown, by Jack Seabrook; published 1993 by Popular Press
  2. A Survey of Some of the Best Science Fiction Ever Published (Thanks to Judy-Lynn Del Rey), by James Nicoll, at Tor.com; published August 13, 2018; retrieved August 16, 2018
  3. Introduction to "The Peddler's Apprentice" in The Collected Stories of Vernor Vinge, by Vernor Vinge, published 2002 by Tor Books
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