026. The Postmortal (2011).

The Postmortal by Drew Magary (2011).

          What would you do if someone finds “THE CURE" for aging?

Would you take “THE CURE” and stop aging from that moment till eternity

Or

Choose to be a natural product and face the death?

Very creative and amazingly well imagined answers are here.

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layers. – John Farrell.   A very regular guy with no distinct feature nor special ability, just one of those guys, which works so well with this book. You see, because this book has full of wild ideas and crazy imagination, it needs a person we can safely related to, getting into the story and all that. And that person is john. 

A successful divorce lawyer (for the first two chapters) who later changes his career as an end specialist (for the last two chapters).

End specialists are people who are basically given licenses to kill by government to take control over population growth. They are started as simple suicide assistants, and then later expand their services to bounty hunter business and everything else that involves guns and violence. 

Government’s legal henchmen are what they become.

This book is the correction of the journal entry written by John for the period of 6 decades started from 2019 ( the year he gets THE CURE) till 2079.

Solara Beck.   John’s dream girl. The one person whose image is imprinted in his memory till the day he died.

Others.   There are a few characters in this book that are worth mentioning here.  John has a sister and a few nieces and nephews. His father is still alive, so as his two girlfriends and a son. Other than his son, David, everyone else get the Cure.

 Beause John’s Cure Age is 28, which means he stops aging at 28 yrs old, and his appearance stays exactly same since then, his son David who refuses THE CURE and stays organic, looks older than his dad in the later chapters. What a creepy world.

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lace. – It all starts from the center of the universe, New York where John practices his specialty, the divorce law. 

After spending couple of decades in NY and another few in abroad, John starts his new career as End specialist in Virginia.

Even if John’s entire story is based in USA, there are lots of articles John picks up from net or news network which explains what is going on around the world. And that is the juice of this book. You won’t believe what China or Russia is doing to their people to control population.

         

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lot. – In 2019, Dr. Otto, a humble researcher, accidentally discovers “THE CURE”, the method to stop aging process completely which is hailed as the greatest scientific discovery in the history of mankind. And naturally everyone go highlander!! Except chopping off the head part, of course.

Immortality creates all sorts of things, changes everything we know about this world. Classic religions disappear cause nobody’s worrying about the after life.  All the  marriages disappear cause however you love your partner, you just can’t live with the same person for 200 yrs. No medicare, no social security cause government can’t support them anymore. 

Then of course, all the pro-death cults spring up from everywhere and terrorists are having great time bombing everywhere for no apparent reasons. 

Welcome to the future with no future.

The story is divided into four parts.

1.      Prohibition. June, 2019 – How the cure is discovered and how we deal with it. Government, at first, tries really hard to ban it, but fat chances!  At the end, everyone gets it.  

2.      Spread. June, 2029 - Earth becomes the big village of Highlanders. The big, happy generations of people who look exactly the same everyday. The beginning of the end.

3.      Saturation. March, 2059 – Humans are slowly but surely running out of everything. Resources, morality, human-value, love, you name it! Everything!!

4.      Correction. June, 2079 – Officially, the planet is nearly bankrupt with millions of people turning into hobos. By way of preserving whatever they have left in their territory, all the countries turn into some sort of totalitarian governments and are getting rid of people they think are not important to their survival. Criminals, hoboes, seniors are all going to be disposed for the name of their country.  
Logan’s run plus Bladerunner.

                   

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erdict. –With the rate Hollywood is pumping zombie and apocalypse movies these days, I won’t be surprised if some producer in some studio had already bought up the movie right and been working on the final script for the inevitable The Immortal movie. 

Transition of John, from skinny pencil pusher to deadly bounty hunter is quite interesting and what carries the story.

This book is a page turner not with thrill/suspense but with everything else: story, characters, history, love and even humanity.

Only con is for some really annoying reason, the writer or editor insert the date of the each journey at the end of the paragraph. 
So, in order to get the better hold of the story(to see if there is any gap between each entries), whenever I get into the new chapters, I have to flip pages, sometime several of them, to check the exact time the story is written which is just ridiculous.

However, that was the only flaw in this otherwise wonderful book.

If you have even a slightest interest in living-forever concep, like the rest of the entire human race, please do yourself favor and read this book. It's will give you something to think about, not to mention frighten you like burning in hell.