The Postmortal
A Novel
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- 4,99 €
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- 4,99 €
Publisher Description
• Finalist for the Philip K. Dick and Arthur C. Clarke Awards •
The gripping first novel by Drew Magary, author of The Hike and The Night the Lights Went Out
"An exciting page turner. . . . Drew Magary is an excellent writer. The Postmortal is . . . even more terrifying than zombie apocalypse." — Mark Frauenfelder, Boing Boing
John Farrell is about to get "The Cure."
Old age can never kill him now.
The only problem is, everything else still can . . .
Imagine a near future where a cure for aging is discovered and-after much political and moral debate-made available to people worldwide. Immortality, however, comes with its own unique problems-including evil green people, government euthanasia programs, a disturbing new religious cult, and other horrors. Witty, eerie, and full of humanity, The Postmortal is an unforgettable thriller that envisions a pre-apocalyptic world so real that it is completely terrifying.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
The "postmortals" of the title of this debut novel, set in the near future, have voluntarily undertaken "the cure," a form of gene therapy that bestows eternal youth although not immortality: recipients can still die of disease or be killed. But as narrator John Farrell explains, taking the cure is a way of sitting "in immortality's waiting room." An odd mixture of satire and dystopian fantasy, this thoughtful novel cleverly explores the consequences of having a long-term lease on life, from the mundane (a woman realizes "I'm always gonna get my period") to the profound (the world's resources exhausted by an ever-growing population) through a series of short, date-stamped blog posts found in 2090 and considered "one of the definitive personal records of life in the former United States" during the 60 years after the cure was discovered. The premise is fascinating, and Magary, a comic sports blogger and satirist (Men with Balls), has an eye for the odd, surprising detail that makes science fiction credible. The plot, though, is little more than an extended exploration of the ramifications of the cure, none of them pleasant. While there's a certain pleasure in watching this brave new world unfold on the page, the narrator's passivity becomes tiresome, and the dry, ironic tone is at odds with the dark vision of a future gone amok.
