Lopez 1 Daniela Lopez English 114B Stephen Topf March 14, 2013 A Novel Foretelling the Future What

will be of Earth and its inhabitants in fifty years? In a society like the one that there is today, where everything is progressing fast like the speed of light, we sometimes come to asking ourselves the question of what will become of us in fifty years. What will the world be like? Will the human race still be alive or will we meet our extinction. The Postmortal, by Drew Magary presents one hypothetical of this future. In his book, Magary presents a world similar to ours in which technology and medical advancements are moving quickly. Magary shows how people live and how the world reacts when science produces a cure for aging. In The Post Mortal, never growing old becomes a reality. Like vampires frozen in life but still able to die from anything besides old age, humans stop aging after taking the cure. At first, this sounds like a lot of fun to be able to stay young and beautiful for a very longtime. The elderly would no longer need care, instead they could be out and partying for the rest of their lives. While this elation seems to be perfect because if you make a mistake you have all the time in the world to fix it, the book shows that this happiness lasts for only a couple of years before everything starts to go downhill. The main problem, which no one thought of, is that Earth doesnt have the resources to keep everyone alive and happy indefinitely with the population duplicating and never decreasing just growing faster and faster. As a result, this leads to people dying of starvation or killing each other as they become cannibals. In the Post Mortal, Drew Magary foreshadows what Earth would be like 50 years from now. If Post mortality became a reality

Lopez 2 would this be good for society, will nature provide enough resources for everyone, and will we have enough time to prepare? Society is already having troubles, as it is with the small time everyone has with more time for everyone it will only generate chaos. Earth is already running out of resources. Science is moving at the speed of light there is already ways of keeping your heart beating forever. This book gives a glimpse of what the world would be like if scientist were to find the cure of aging in our attempt to beat death. But the book also showed a world becoming extremely chaotic because the world would be extremely over populated leading for there to be a lot of poverty throughout the world, because of not having enough resources. Most people believe including myself believe that living longer is amazing because of people we have lost and wish they would have lived longer to see us all grown up. For example a gran parent that dies he or she wishes to have more time to see all their goals accomplished there kids and grandkids all grown up. This book proves that we should just be happy with the time there is and make the best of it. In the book they live in a world were some people are getting tired of living and start committing suicide, because they felt they were done living. Suicide was mostly committed because the people were tired of living and found no point of still being alive. In this society it came to the point were end specialist a program that assist people into helping commit suicide which it is actually authorized by the government. In the book they even develop a Soflu shot that kills people with the cure. This happens in post mortal because people want to find a point in life because they are tired of their life not having a meaning. They wish to die to be with people who have already died because they are tired of being alone without that person. For example in the beginning of the book John dad did not wish to get the cure because he wanted to die to be with his wife. Later Johns father did receive the cure because

Lopez 3 of peer pressure and when he was passing all he said was that he was happy that he was finally going to be with his wife. I believe that people of today find time to be extremely precious because they know there life will come to and end and only have so much time to complete there goals. Because people will run out of time eventually and as they get old are not able to do everything they were able to do when they were young. This is why people are so competitive and strive to do well with the time they have for example more and more people are going to college. In the Wall street Journal Grads Head to College In Record Numbers Sara Murray states Collegeenrollment rates have been rising gradually: In 2008, 68.6% of high-school graduates headed to college, up from 62.9% in 1999. This article talks about how college enrollments increase as the years are passing by each year it gets higher and higher. Rather in the book kids are not even going to college because they believe they have time most take breaks for like 10 years then go to college because they believe to have all the time in the world and in fact they did they have the cure and are going to live longer than they expected. But in the world where everyone is taking time off and no one is taking the time to get educated we can assume it is only going to lead to chaos. In the Post Mortal it is exactly what happens gangs start forming like the D36 which are people killing people who have the cure. He inhaled the food, as if it wasnt even there. He came back and, together with his buddy, redoubled his efforts on us. (Post Mortal 349) People joining together to take resources from others in order to continue living instead of living a life without worry like the cure promoted. I saw a five-year-old kid being tackled, the thug sinking his teeth into his leg.(Post Mortal 226) Thats when you know it bad a big person on top of a small child wanting to eat his heart because there are no resources.

Lopez 4 When I read this book I was in shock because even right now as we speak society is running out of resources. For example Dan Archdeacon in Running out of oil states Estimates are that oil will run out in less than 40 years, well within our generation's lifetime. This is also what happens in Post Mortal. Tap water fees at city restaurants are now regularly hitting the five-dollar mark. (Post Mortal 165) How freaky is that in the book water prices are going up and up because they are running out of water. Earths population is growing and growing as well even without the cure we are running out of resources. Post Mortal is a foreshadow of what will be of society in 50 years because we are already running out of resources. I was also amazed that in the book with everyone being post mortal and no one dying there population grew tremendously. Like present day-to-day Earth population is growing and growing and its society is not post mortal yet like in the book. On health line Camilo Mora, an assistant professor of geography in the College of Social Sciences at the University of Hawaii at Manoa stated In a planet with limited resources and a sensitive climate, with most of its natural resources being overexploited and its economic systems overstressed, meeting the additional demands of a growing human population without destroying the Earth and our social systems will be one of the greatest tests to humanity in the years to come. This book is truly a foreshadow of what the world would be like if it was post mortal. Man will probably not survive like in Post Mortal because as it is man is already having problems. What is amazing and we are getting closer and closer to being post mortal. Science is progressing faster and faster as days go buy. For example a scientific breakthrough just came about keep the heart beating at a steady rate forever (Levinson Sean Elite Daily). We are already trying to live forever is it really a good idea? Reading the book Post Mortal scares me of

Lopez 5 the future because sure its just fiction but all this can come to a reality and truly it is looking like it is. This book seems to be like 1984 a book I read in high school were it talks about how the government is becoming more and more a part of our life were there are spying on us. Which is what is going on today Several email provider companies several years ago released emails to the government (Pfohl Bill, Privacy). This is exactly what 1984 predicted a book published in 1949 predicted what is happening now 60 years later so Post mortal being published in 2011 is scary because something are already becoming a reality. Are society is already struggling with depression and poverty. Too many people are in the planet already and not enough resources are available therefore children are dying in Africa because they dont have food to eat. To me, this looks a lot like The Post Mortal to many people and no food. If are government and those rich individuals keep going this way I am almost 100% sure society will end up like the people in The Post Mortal because society is somewhat already there but not completely there. In conclusion, I would have to say that Post Mortal is relevant to present day society. I believe we will reach a post mortal world like pictured in the book in a short amount of time with science progressing so fast. Society will soon find ways to live longer than the norm and that will lead to the use of Earths resources and, for Earth to become overpopulated and man will probably end up dying out an nature would win like man vs. nature. Man says it will live but nature knows it will die. Like I mentioned before mankind is already loosing resources like oil and some states are even in water droughts like California. An science is moving fast and a post mortal world will soon be here faster that we know it if we dont pay attention. For example, the news media really changed my view of Earth because it open my eyes to see even though we are

Lopez 6 not post mortal yet society is already facing these problems. I strongly believe that when we do become post mortal in the future our society will have similar problems just like in the book. Society will run out or resources and just like in the book there will be chaos people killing people to stay alive. Society will soon be like The Post Mortal if a cure of age or of immortality comes about because Earths mankind is similar to the one in the book they all want to move forward. They will think that immortality is a step towards the future because its the new thing. Which we already see today a new iPhone and a big chunk of society just goes out and gets it because it is the new thing. So if a cure of age comes about society will believe it to be the new thing and go out and get it because everyones getting it and no think about the consequences. Society will probably soon be there but I certainly hope that when society does reach that point I am either dead, young in my 20s, or that Earth society does not end up like the on in The Post Mortal.

Lopez 7 Work Cited Archdeacon, Dan. "Running Out of Oil." Buffalo News: 0. Jun 20 2007. ProQuest. Web. 17 Mar. 2014 . Florell, Dan. "Just A Click Away." Communique (0164775X) 39.8 (2011): 42. Education Research Complete. Web. 17 Mar. 2014. Krans, Brian. "Overpopulation: An Overlooked Factor in Global Health." Healthlines RSS News. N.p., 19 Mar. 2014. Web. 26 Mar. 2014. Levinson, Sean. "A Scientific Breakthrough Has Discovered A Way To Potentially Keep Your Heart Beating Forever | Elite Daily." Elite Daily. N.p., 3 Mar. 2014. Web. 17 Mar. 2014. Magary, Drew. The Postmortal: A Novel. New York: Penguin, 2011. Print. Murray, Sara. "Grads Head to College In Record Numbers." The Wall Street Journal. Dow Jones & Company, 28 Apr. 2010. Web. 17 Mar. 2014.