What if
we had the technological means to live forever? Vance develops a
society where this is true, yet people still engage in reproduction.
Physical resources being limited, this combination would be
catastrophic without some control.
To control the excesses of immortality the society Vance has built in To Live Forever has enacted the Fair Play Act. Citizens are divided along a five-step categorization, where each category has a longer lifespan than the previous one. Step five is true immortality. Newborns enter the lowest step and advance based on their performance towards the advancement of public good.
Of course this doesn't work perfectly, and given sufficient strain it fails to work at all. Vance works it out as his typical ambiguous hero fights for his wrongfully taken immortality back. Not topmost Vance but a really enjoyable adventure.
Category: SF/social anthropology. Recommendation: read.