It's several centuries in the future, and humans don't have to work, or get old...they live forever! A simple in-utero operation makes it so:
P.88
"hydrogen, the same universal fuel that stoked the fires of the Stars themselves, and delivered it in almost any form anyone could wish - heat, kinetic energy or electricity -- without fuss or bother. Well, not entirely without bother. It had taken a long time and a lot of clever engineering to figure out how to get the pions to makethe muons that would make the reaction go; but there it was. Lukewarm fusion operated without violent explosions, and possible containment or deadly radioactive contamination. It worked best at an optimal temperature of 700 degrees c ( instead of many thousands!), and so it was intrinsically both safe and convenient. It was, really, the fundamental reason why the living members of the human race now outnumbered the Dead. The foetal procedures could extend life, but it was only the cheap and easy energy that would never run out that could keep all 10 trillion human beings alive."

P.29:
"so longevity was a do-it-yourself industry. There was no help from Darwin. But...
But once molecular biology got itself well organized there were things that could be done. And were done. For most of the human population. But now and then, there were an unfortunate flawed few who missed out on the wonders of modern Life-prolonging science because some undetectable and incurable quirks in their systems rejected the necessary treatment... Like Rafiel."

Poor Rafiel is an actor who, for some reason, the in-utero surgery didn't work. He was currently 90 years old, but modern medicine could do wonders for him. He went in for a"treatment" every so many years, that tweaked him and kept him at the optimum age of 30. But this last Time, when he came out of the hospital, things didn't seem to feel the same. He was...tired.

P.64:
"Rafiel made an effort and pressed Docilia's arm against his side amatively - well, maybe there was his problem right there, he thought. Deprivation. After all, why should any healthy person deliberately stop having sex, thus very possibly endangering not only his performance but even his health?"

P.64-65:
" 'I have an idea,' she murmured. 'Can we go in the maze for a while?'
After all, why not? Rafiel surrendered. 'I'd like nothing better,' he said gallantly, knowing as well as she did that the best thing one did in the isolation of a maze was to do a little friendly fooling around with one's companion - on whom, in any case, Rafiel was beginning to feel he might as well be beginning to have sexual designs again, after all. They had no trouble finding a quiet dead-end and, without discussion, Raphael unhesitatingly put his hand on her.
'are you sure you aren't too tired?' she asked, but turning toward him as he spoke; and, of course, that imposed on him the duty to prove that he wasn't tired at all. He realized he didn't have much time to demonstrate it in, so they wasted none. They were horizontal on the warm, grassy ground in a minute.
It was strange, he reflected, pumping away, that something you wanted to do could also be a wearisome chore. He was glad enough when they had finished..."

After all, if you've lived to the age of 90, partying, being glorified by fans and paparazzi, having sex with multiple starlets, maybe you do get...tired. ( )

This is a 1990 Novella by Pohl, and probably not representative of his work. I don't recall anything I've read by him and wanted to try something that wouldn't take long to read. A 100 page book fit the bill. I'll give him another try with an earlier full-length book, but I was pretty much bored with this one. There were some great futuristic scene settings and I liked the ending, but there seemed to be a lot of filler in it that could have had better character interactions, I thought. I do not recommend this unless you are already a fan of Pohl and want to see how this work compares to others. ( )

The recent death of Frederik Pohl on Sept 2, 2013 has prompted me to want to read some of his books that I missed over the years. Since his first stories date to about 1940, there are many to choose from. I was a big fan of Pohl when I was young - he was the editor of Galaxy Magazine in the 60's and I enjoyed a number of his Galaxy Reader anthologies and several novels, as well as numerous short stories over the years. He appears in an awful lot of books in my library. However, I haven't really read him in quite a few years (certainly no novels) and so I must catch up a bit.

'Outnumbering The Dead' is a mildly interesting novella from 1992 and a quick read. The story was enhanced by a number of full page illustrations by Steve Crisp. The gist of the tale is this: Suppose virtually everybody, except you, got to live forever. The you here is Rafiel, and this is his story from when he wakes up at 92 years of age having just had medical procedures to keep him "youthful," up to his last breath on the last page. I liked it OK. There may have been something profound in here that I missed. The story managed to feel slow and drawn out especially at the beginning, despite the short length. I warmed to the book a little by the end, but I'd maybe skip this one. 2 1/2 - 3 stars ( )