The idea behind the book is a scientist developed a cure for
aging. You take it, you sort of freeze at the age and appearance you are at
that moment. You could still die from being hit by a truck, or if your liver
fails because you decide to just drink all the time, but you won’t die of old
age. The book is compiled from a series of online journal entries composed by
John Farrell, who took “the cure” when it still wasn’t FDA-approved, and
doctors were performing it in their kitchens (and other people were trying to
blow up those doctors in their kitchens). Soon enough, public outcry leads to
it being approved, and the story moves from there, as the world population
swells, resources are consumed, and society begins to shift.
Through all that moves Farrell, who struggles to figure out
what he really wants. He took the cure because he feared death and aging, but
it seems like, without that clock ticking in the background, he can’t commit to
a path. He drifts, seizing upon whatever catches his interest in the moment. A
girl he had a crush on in junior high reenters his life, he takes the
opportunity to reconnect. He meets a guy who wants to spend a year living in
each country, he goes with him for awhile. He seizes upon certain ideas, certain desires
for a brief time, and then sticks with it long after out inertia, a lack of any
better options that he can discern. I don’t know it it’s a perpetual adolescence
– he was 29 when he took the cure – but his maturity certainly seems stunted.
Whatever problems he has, he sees no need to resolve them, and as time goes on,
the number of people who care whether he does or not shrinks steadily.
Which is my biggest issue with the book, I’m interested in
the world it suggests, but I’m not interested in the character we spend the
majority of the book following around. We get glimpses of the wider world, in
things Farrell observes, or messages he gets he shares with us (the bit where a
senior partner at his law firm tells him to get out of estate law, because
it’ll become obsolete was an interesting one, or the idea that you’d never be
rid of your asshole boss, and he likely would never change because he figures
he can just go on forever), but they’re just glimpses. And the book jumps
forward in time periodically, to examine different periods after the cure is
introduced, but this means that when we reach a new era, the things that are
new to the reader, were old hat to Farrell, and so they largely go uncommented
on, or unexplored.
Having thought about it over the last few days, I think I’d
decline the cure as it’s presented here. If it’s available to everyone, it’s
just ecologically sensible to say no. Removing death by old age on a planet
that is probably already overpopulated is not the best idea. If it were an
option just for me, then I’d still have to say no, because I’m not clever
enough to do all the stuff Christopher Lambert did in Highlander. Fake my death
and leave all my money to some other person, who turns out to be me using a
name I stole from some dead infant. I’d never pull that off.
‘I sat behind the curtain and held Sonia’s hand; Nate sat
opposite me and grabbed her other one. I thought this would be strange. In
fact, it was quite the opposite. We made a good team, Nate and I. Whenever I
started to wear down, he’d pick up the slack, and vice versa. I highly
recommend that any woman giving birth pack two men for the trip.’
No comments:
Post a Comment