"Dear Pen Pal" is a humorous epistolary science-fiction story by the Canadian-American writer A. E. van Vogt, originally published in the Winter 1949 issue of The Arkham Sampler.
The story was republished (as "Letter from the Stars") in the July 1950 issue of Out of This World Adventures, as well as in the 1957 Ace Double The Earth in Peril / Who Speaks of Conquest?
In his initial letter, Skander spends some time describing himself and his home planet in the constellation Auriga, whose intelligent lifeforms are long-lived, highly radioactive, and chromium-based, thriving at a temperature of around 900 degrees Kelvin.
Skander admits that he intercepted the human's application to the pen-pal program, but justifies his act by the assertion that he is lonely and in need of conversation, due to serving a lengthy prison sentence for conducting an illegal scientific experiment which is implied to have harmed many of his fellow Aurigans.
In the penultimate letter, Skander gleefully reveals that the "photographic plates" (which have just been activated) are actually a form of consciousness-transfer device, and that his intent has always been to switch bodies with the human, thereby evading the balance of his prison sentence.