This novella is an exploration of character, situation, dying as spiritual poetry and physical decay.

The medical technology that had so far arrested the inexorable toll of physical decay now worked its miracle no longer.

As the novel progresses, the jobs and means the family uses to stay alive slowly lead to their physical and moral decay.

But if you've ever watched someone die over a long period of time, physical decay isn't always the first thing to get to you.

What's more, this physical decay seems to reflect an ethical and moral collapse.

But hard use and neglect have turned it into a Gothic horror - an emblem of the school system's physical decay.

Solarians would know when one of their number would be dying of old age and physical decay.

All that came to an end in the late 50's, when cities fell into a long period of physical and cultural decay.

His last years were marked by increasing physical and mental decay and withdrawal from public affairs.

But literature doesn't live and die with us and our physical decay.