Looking for following story: 80-year old man/woman is born. Each birthday she gets one year younger. Is this story written by Ray Bradbury?

Geert Willems
Library Rotterdam
Netherlands

sorry doesn't ring any bells

Geert:

There is a story with a hint of that... 'The Tombling Day'.
'Death and the Maiden' is another.

But as to your exact description...riding the merry-go-'round in 'Something Wicked This Way Comes' has the idea of becoming younger with each turn of the ride; or Mr. Dark, in the same book title, tears out the pages of a diary (in the motion picture version) and promises Mr. Halloway youth, and then an additional year is added for each page he tears out, because of Mr. Halloway's delay in deciding to give Mr. Dark the information he seeks....

Other than that, I can't think off hand anything that is likened to your inquiry...

The only other thing of Ray's I can think of with such a plot is a chapter of "From the Dust Returned," but the backwards aging of Angelina Marguerite is greatly accelerated--she starts at 17 or 18 years old and reverts in far less than a year. The book "Otherborn," by Joan Goult, 1980, is about a brother and sister, Mark and Leggy, separated from their boat, who come ashore on a Pacific island inhabited by a race of people with a radically different process of birth, aging, and death. These people start out about age 80 and get younger, but I don't know whether their reverse aging goes year by year or happens faster.

From Quicker than the Eye there is a short story - "At The End Of The Ninth Year" that reminds me of this. Might not be what your looking for. I don't think it says how old the man and wife are, but as the title says, every nine yrs, every aspect of the body has become anew.

[This message has been edited by Miss Piggy (edited 09-02-2003).]

[This message has been edited by Miss Piggy (edited 09-02-2003).]

This reply came from anxious triffid by way of the newsgroups rec.arts.books.childrens and rec.arts.sf.written.

The novel "Counter-Clock World" by Philip K. Dick uses this idea.

This reply came from lawrence by way of the Abebooks Booksleuth Forums.
�
"The Man who Never Grew Young" by Fritz Leiber?

These replies came by way of the Booksleuth Forum at Abebooks. They appear to consist of one possible solution, plus another unknown story description.

From:� severn
F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote a short story called "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button" along these lines. It appeared in the collection "Tales of the Jazz Age."

From:� latimer
The story is told from a male perspective. (don't think his name is ever disclosed). Something has gone wrong with time, and it now travels backwards. However, the man in the story is unable to die (or be born, whatever). He witness great events in history, being unmade. Stonehenge being dismantled, the spinx being torn down etc. The story finishes with him ending up with a small tribe of 'missing link' human like creatures. Really strange. I had always thought it was one of Bradbury's short stories. Could be wrong.

Oh, okay, it's not unknown after all.

From:� Rocambole
To:� latimer
That's Fritz Leiber's already-mentioned 'The Man who Never Grew Young'.

These replies came by way of the newsgroups rec.arts.books.childrens and rec.arts.sf.written.

From: anxious triffid
Sounds like a comic book called "The Man Who Grew Young" by Daniel Quinn.

From: lewy
It's probably the Leiber story as it would be tough to forget that the
original was a comic. The similarities between the two are close enough to make one wonder if the Leiber estate knows about the Quinn book.