Forever is So Long

Frank Ridley has something generations of people have dreamed about: time. A revolutionary medical experiment has extended his expected lifespan to three hundred years, leaving him young while everyone around him will continue to age. Yet when Frank returns to Virginia Halloran, the woman he has never stopped loving, his extraordinary gift suddenly feels more like a barrier between them. Virginia still loves him, but loving Frank now means facing a future neither of them ever imagined. Frank believes longer lives could change civilization, giving people the years they need to learn, grow, and build a better world. Virginia wants something far more familiar: a home, a family, and a life shared with people whose years pass as hers do. When Frank offers her the opportunity to receive the same treatment, she must decide whether a life measured in centuries is something she actually wants. Forever is So Long was originally published in the April 1953 issue of Avon Science Fiction and Fantasy Reader. John Jakes was only twenty-one when the story appeared, and it belongs to the remarkably productive opening years of a career that eventually made him famous for historical fiction. Jakes began selling fiction while still in college. His first published science fiction story, The Dreaming Trees, appeared in Fantastic Adventures in November 1950, followed the next month by Your Number Is Up! in Amazing Stories. More than two dozen additional speculative stories appeared from 1951 through 1953. He later created the sword-and-sorcery hero Brak and achieved enormous success with the eight-volume Kent Family Chronicles and the North and South trilogy. His 2002 novel Charleston became his sixteenth consecutive New York Times bestseller.