POSTMORTAL

POSTMORTAL

“I saw her dying on the screen, and I had to fight the urge to turn it off, because it was that easy to do that and not deal with it -- to let her be some distant problem I didn’t have to acknowledge”

Drew Magary is an American journalist, humor columnist, and novelist. Now he isn’t the most known, it is strange I even came across it. I suppose I not only judged a book by its cover but my older sister also persuaded me to read one of his novels. He wrote Prostmortal (The End Specialist), Men with Balls, The Hike, and his most recent Point B ( a teleportation love story). However, Postmortal was the one that had the grim reaper with his own scythe impelled through his chest. I must also note that when I first started reading the book it was not “The End Specialist” it was just Postmortal. 

Postmortal takes place in a semi current future. The year is 2019 when scientist Graham Otto discovers the cure to aging. He basically finds a way to deactivate a certain gene and alternate any DNA, then reintroducing it to the body. This surprisingly causes quite the social and moral disagreements throughout many societies across the globe. 

We see the controversy the cure causes through the eyes of John Farell. Like most things that are new it was not legalized right away.  This caused people to riot and protest until they got what they wanted; the cure. Humans are humans and they always find a way to get what they desire. Like our man John. 

Getting the cure while it was illegal was not an easy task to do, especially with crazy pro-death bombers lurking at every corner. That was the real fear of getting the cure to death, knowing someone could just come and end it and it would all have been for nothing. Could you imagine finally getting the cure to aging just to die in a massacre.

We are introduced to the people in John’s life after he makes the choice to get the cure himself (pre-legalized). John’s choice to get the cure impacts each person differently. The first person he tells was his roommate who took his bravery as inspiration and went to get the cure at the same place John went to but just a couple days later. When she got there John waited outside for her, but as he waited he watched a blonde woman set a bomb and blow up the building his friend was in. This causes a huge impact in his mental state. 

Fast forward a couple years, the cure is legal to get for anyone over the age of twenty-five. This causes a spike in all the pro-death believers to commit hate crimes.  They start to create gangs and organizations dedicated for killing pro-cure people. The greenies for example, are a gang who paint their faces and go around stabbing and carving people's birthdays on their body somewhere. They don’t kill them, they want to make sure they suffer for choosing to expand their life. At first, I thought they were acting like terrorists (which I mean they still do), but they have all the reasons too. If we think about all the food, water, and oil a human uses in a lifespan it's already a ton. Now, us expanding our time on the planet obviously increases the amount of resources we require (and not just as a country). 

The vaccine getting legalized really starts affecting the beliefs people had. It affects the divorce rate forsure. Without there being a ‘certain death’ people didn’t feel the need to be committed to someone “forever”. There became a thing as recycled marriages, until people would stop marrying all together. Which seems extremely bizarre to me, to think, people could only put up with someone because there was eventually going to be a way out? To believe no one could care for anyone because they genuinely have care for someone but because they feel it is the only way to survive? You live life how you want, then find someone, have a family, live it through and then die? It wasn’t until this vaccine came out that people started to be real with themselves or what they thought would actually make them happy. 

John reads an article on a case about an eight- month old baby named Emilia Burkheart, who’s mother decided to give her the cure. AT EIGHT-MONTH OLD. Which is a huge no, because no one past the age of twenty-five has gotten the vaccine.

“As part of the executive order citizens who get the cue will no longer be eligible for social security or Medical benefits… no citizen under the age of twenty-six will be allowed to purchase the cure.”

The Darian’s law gets passed in 2027, less than a decade after the cure was legalized, expanding the death penalty offenses beyond murder to include violent crimes. Example rape, arson, child abuse, and capital assult. So, you can imagine how the world reacted to Mia Burkheart giving a baby the cure. 

The cure also brought along new jobs. When John couldn’t be a divorse lawyer anymore he had to find a new field. He lands a job as an end specialist. This agency is for people who already have the cure but decide that they do not want to live longer than they already have and grant them that wish; literally a suicide hotline. In some cases, they will want to choose how they want to die and the end specialist will grant them their wish (for an extra charge of course).  

John comes across this forty- two year old prostitute with a cure age of eighteen. She wants to end her life because she feels as if she has played the role of an eighteen year old her whole life even though she is much older than that. Men treat her as a teenager so she feels the urge to act like a teenager. She mentions how the boys and men who would just grab her and kiss on her without it meaning anything would treat an older looking woman who was around her actual age with respect and wouldn’t even be noticed in any way. How she hated never being able to experience that. In a way, people behave that way now… we feel we must act the way we are viewed. 

The planet eventually starts running low on supplies and our diplomacy definitely did not improve with the vaccine. China bans the cure right from the start, and demands anyone from China who may have been in other countries, to return to their country. They even go as extremes as branding all  newborns with their birth dates on their wrists. Other countries, like Russia, embrace the cure and use it for military purposes. They make the cure mandatory for anyone who would like any government based job. 

Overall, I felt like Magary’s way of interpreting such a controversial idea into our would and making so lifelike and relatable. He included so many perspectives from all the encounters John has. He made you feel close to any character you came across. Everyone has a story. Drew Magary captured humanity perfectly.