Outnumbering the Dead

by Frederik Pohl, Steve Crisp (Illustrator)

Several centuries in the future, human society has reached a state of near-utopia. All communicable diseases have been eradicated and people live affluent, fulfilled lives. Lukewarm fusion provides almost limitless energy supplies, making space travel, even travel to far-distant stars, cheap and easy. And people have time for such pleasure cruises now, for a simple pre-birth operation ensures the body will not age. Other than fatal accidents, there’s every reason to expect to live forever.

Perfect—except perfection somehow never includes everyone, and Rafiel’s perfect world is marred by the fact that he is aging and he will die.

In a peaceful world of ten trillion immortals, what is it that gives life meaning?

Genres: Science Fiction, Fiction, Novella

110 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1990

About the author

Frederik George Pohl, Jr. was an American science fiction writer, editor and fan, with a career spanning over seventy years. From about 1959 until 1969, Pohl edited Galaxy magazine and its sister magazine IF winning the Hugo for IF three years in a row. His writing also won him three Hugos and multiple Nebula Awards. He became a Nebula Grand Master in 1993.

Reviews

[TK421 · Rating 5 out of 5]

OUTNUMBERING THE DEAD was easily one of the most thought-provoking books I have read in quite some time.

In the distant future humans have the ability to live forever. While still in the womb, these unborn babies are given a treatment during the second trimester...for most, it works. But for the unfortunate few, time still slips away one second at a time.

Essentially, Pohl uses this slim volume to explore the consequences of immortality. Since most of the population is unable to understand what it would feel like to know that death was going to happen, Pohl has created a great vessel in Rafiel, a dancer and actor. Rafiel is the perfect man to "play the part" of a mortal. His entire life has been in the entertainment industry, faking life to please others. For the world, Rafiel is a curiosity. Perhaps freak would be a better word to use. The many ways the immortals treat Rafiel are handled with care and skill, even though Pohl only gives the minutest amount of detail to make his world plausible.

The real calamity of the story is how Rafiel cannot make the immortals understand what it is like to face death. Rafiel's time is finite. He wants to use this time. But if you are an immortal, what does time mean? Why do something now, when you could do it in a year, a decade, a century? And because of this ability to postpone indefinitely, their limitless life may have less value than a finite one. They have no base of understanding of goals, dreams, and desires. These words are only relative to them. For them, a dream is still a dream a thousand years later. For them, reality can be the moment, but it could also be the moment's future. Alas, urgency and passion to accomplish things in life are not even considered.

At 125 pages, there is not much room for plot. But Pohl knows how to counter this. By getting the reader to care about Rafiel's impending death, Pohl is able to make this story more about ideas and emotions than about action. And Pohl accomplishes this in spades.

What are you going to do with your time?

HIGHEST POSSIBLE RECOMMENDATION

[mlady_rebecca · Rating 5 out of 5]

My favorite quote from this book:

The male and female speakers are both actors. The story takes place in a future society where disease has been eliminated, and humans have greatly extended lifespans. It's an interesting comment on the idea of immortality.

'You mean Algretta? I don't know,' he said, after thought. 'Forse it's just because she's so different from us. She doesn't even talk like us. She's - serious.'

'Oh Rafiel? Aren't we serious? We work hard.'

'Well, sure we do, but it's just - well - you know, we're just sort of making shadow pictures on a screen. Maybe it comes down to what she's serious about,' he offered. 'You know, she started a whole new life for herself - quit medicine, took up science ...'

Docilia sniffed. 'That's not so unusual. I could do that if I wanted to. Some day I probably will.'

Rafiel smiled up at her, imagining this pale, tiny beauty becoming a scientist. 'When?' he asked.

'What does it matter when? I've got plenty of time!'

And Rafiel fell asleep thinking about what 'plenty of time' meant. It meant, among other things, that when you had for ever to get around to important things, it gave you a good reason to postpone them - for ever.

[Craig · Rating 4 out of 5]

Here Pohl accomplished in a very short novel what many other writers have taken trilogies to do; he's painted a very realistic portrait of a far-future world, peopled it with interesting and convincing characters, and offered serious and thought-provoking insight into the nature of humanity. It's a very poignant volume.

[Chuck Byrd · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.75. My first Pohl book...not too bad..

[Emily Monelle · Rating 5 out of 5]

I struggled with this rating. At parts I would have described the book as slow, strenuous, maybe even a bit boring to the less nerdy side of me. Yet there were pages that could not turn fast enough and chapters that could not possibly left me closer to falling off my seat. The build up is so much more imperative than I thought. Pohl breathes life into Rafiel in 110 pages, and captures the complexities of immortal life, while confronted with mortality itself. If you knew you had little time left, what would you do with it-who would you spend it with? What would you hope to leave behind? This book made me gasp, laugh, and cry. Who needs 2500 page novels when you could have 110 pages of genius. Short and sweet-just as life is meant to be.

I want to mention that in none of the general synopsis I found of this book did they mention it could be considered a romance. It even gets a little spicy at times (not too specific in detail-nudity in one piece of artwork). I'm not big on romance as a plotline- but when dealing with life, love is bound to play it's part. Pohl does a fantastic job letting the love story blossom without taking away the glory of the science fiction.

Side note: they need to turn this into a movie while Johnny Depp can still play Rafiel because no one else will suffice.

[Chris Bernard · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was really good. "Having the time to do everything turned into an excuse not to do anything."

[Chris Lynch · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read it years ago, but this novella has stayed with me. It asks: in a world of eternal youth, why grow up? When you've got all the time in the world, why do anything?

[Kain · Rating 2 out of 5]

I went into this book with great expectations, assuming I would read all about the struggle between the mortal and the immortal, the great lives of the immortals and the horror of the mortal. What I recieved although "touched" on this was mostly one mans struggle with staying a dancer for an incorrectly portrayed Greek play. There was horrendous sounding costumes mentioned a "few" times and multiple points where an interesting twist started only to be thrown away and never mentioned again...nothing in this book made me want to keep turning the pages other than the need to be done with it so I could give it away and never read it again. I'm not normally this harsh with a book review but this book dissapointed me all the way through. Perhaps I missed something in all the multiple words from multiple languages that are never explained....perhaps I should have googled the translation or perhaps simple I missed some beauty from the scenery that was barely described or the technology that was named but never explained. From the get go this book confused me at multiple turns, bored me with the shallow, unfleshed characters and did not succeed in taking advantage of the brilliant idea it is to its full purpose.

[· · Rating 1 out of 5]

(5 October, 2024)

An unexceptional tale of seemingly vacuous immortals, if they actually are so is left to the reader's imagination (Pohl implies that some 200 years equates to immortality somehow... ) and a single 'short term' person.

Rafiel, the 'short-termer', is a star, partly because he is a great triple-threat, partly because he will die someday. While preparing for his next gig the reader meets a bunch of oh-so-regular persons, every single one forgettable. Incidentally, that gig is 'Oedipus', one would think Pohl would use that as a platform to discuss any of the following points:

- Foretelling the future
- Forestalling disaster
- Good intentions with awful results
- Ignorance is, or is not, bliss
- Omens of catastrophic fiascos

... but no, all are ignored. There is also a glaring lack of commentary on how immortality would affect the human psyche, except for the notion that everyone would think death as funny - like drooling idiots!

Once again, great idea, dreadful execution.

[Brent Byron · Rating 3 out of 5]

The concept is great - immortal humans now outnumber the total number of dead humans from all history. The main character is a rare freak, a short timer that will only live a mere 120 years or so. Many thought-provoking science fiction moments arise from this premise.
The story execution was less great. Some unnecessary and bizarre relationships fill most of the story. It was pretty racy and many characters were astonishingly foolish and petty for being more than 100 years old.
Interesting, but won't be keeping this one in the collection.

[Sir Blue · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great art.
In a world of ten trillion people.
Where people are quasi imortal.
One man finds love.
The babys r birthed from animals.
As fetuses.
The odipudus was the ship I think.
They went to mars.
A short book.

[Katie Pfeifer · Rating 5 out of 5]

I had to read it again more than 10 years later. And I still cried at the end. It's a reflective book, reading about how humans can be immortal (except the main character) and the little tidbits and phrases throughout the book that make you sit and think about life.

[Jason Bleckly · Rating 4 out of 5]

Some of the thespian stuff is overly long, but it's still an enjoyable afternoons read.

[S.L. · Rating 3 out of 5]

Rather bland, not as interesting as I expected for a Pohl sci-fi. The mixed languages also made it strange.

[Empirical Rationalist · Rating 2 out of 5]

This was recommended somewhere sometime I can't remember (could be alongside Harry Harrison's Make Room! Make Room!,) and this was in my mental to-read list for quite some time. When trying to read fiction, I generally do not preview the summary but just a few reviews mentioning what kind of SciFi sub-genre it belongs to, and how impactful it was. This work, though was well-written with no obvious discontent, was not exactly an imbibing read. Generally, I love to read the genre dealt here - how people's milieu evolve over long periods of time, and plus, this is a novella length work. This didn't start particularly well, this did not progress well, and it didn't end well either. I always look for profundity when reading SciFi (or any good work of Fiction.) The fact that the Protagonist is a performer and a mortal need not be the only idea propounded excessively and it was grating. This shouldn't even be a Novella but just a short story. All these characters didn't really need any "development" to warrant this length. I was not particular inflamed at the "wasted" time, after all there was no bad writing, but I have other better works waiting to read with little time to read at all. I was waiting for "something" to happen but it was such an elementary SciFi trope and denouement, if there was one, I was at once unhappy that nothing happened, and relieved that it was over. I am not sure why this was included in Gardner Dozois' Best of Best Short SciFi Novels. Disappointing read, at least for me.

[Anita · Rating 2 out of 5]

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.

[Jim · Rating 4 out of 5]

What do you do as a mortal when everyone around you lives forever? Frederik Pohl crafts an elegant story that explores the meaning of life and death in an elegant, subtle and poignant tale of what it means to live. His craft at building an entire utopia yet emphasizing humanity all within a novella is remarkable.

[Richard · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fairly interesting classic sci-if utopia world building, but the story is short and only develops the one concept. I was hoping for some insight into mortality from an aging author but all I got was the trite 'live on through your children'.

[Marik Casmon · Rating 3 out of 5]

Science fiction set in the distant future about a song-and-dance man who, unlike most other people at that time, is not immortal. The story of his last few days/weeks. Interesting and well-written.

[Manuel Todro-rodriguez · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read this book back in junior high or high school. I remembered it was a great concept, but had to re-read it. Definately had a deeper meaning and more impact at this stage in my life.

[Jeff · Rating 5 out of 5]

I found Pohl's view of the world as the only man who could die intriguing, excellent read, not too long of a book either.

[Ned Stenger White · Rating 4 out of 5]

a great look at the questions of mortality and immortality.