Quickie: The Postmortal

Posted on February 8th, 2012

Baby likes black humor.

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.

The Postmortal is funny, timely, and imaginative. It’s a collage of media, including blog entries, news stories, link roundups, and official documents. I enjoyed it enough to stay up past 3am finishing it.

The book explores what would happen if there was a cure for the aging process. When the cure is first introduced, humanity undergoes a prolonged adolescence. At first, people just party and party and party. A couple of decades later, repetitive hookups and relentless barhopping begin to stale. Questions about marriage, parenthood, and the meaning of life begin to surface, although many are still resistant to growing up. Each section of the book advances a couple of decades, and each one shows a progressively more depressing, crowded world.

The Postmortal thoughtfully explores the ramifications of life without death. Here are some of the questions the author attempts to answer:

Can marriage exist without the promise of an end?
How would parenthood change? Parents no longer look (or act) older than their children. Some people have multigenerational families, or just multiple families.
How do people view their careers? Without the possibility of retirement, everyone remains in the workforce forever.
What happens to pop culture? Celebrities remain hot for eternity and never get replaced. The same crappy musician is in the Top 40 for centuries.
How do governments like China’s, who put caps on family size, cope with the burgeoning population? (Not very nicely.)
How long is the line at the bank when the population reaches 10 billion? How about the Emergency Room?
What kind of religion do people turn to when they no longer have an afterlife to consider?
When aging isn’t an option, what kind of death can these “post-mortal” people expect? (Ugly and mean.)
What happens to the environment? (You can guess.)
Is there a point when people feel that their lives are complete? (This is the protagonists’ primary concern, and it leads him down some dark avenues.)

Overall, I really enjoyed the author’s black humor and imagination.

Categories: Reading

Canned

Posted on January 25th, 2012

This is the story of how I got laid off.

It was such a typical day. I ran through the door of my office building, poured myself a cup of coffee, and talked with some coworkers for a few minutes before turning on my computer. I checked my e-mail, opened the document I was writing, and settled into work. A week before, I had met my boss. He worked from an office in Argentina, so that was the first time I met him in person. We discussed all the projects I would be taking on in the near future and made a few predictions about the latest merger. (These predictions did not include me being canned.)

I got a call requesting that I come up to the conference room. Not unusual. I jogged upstairs, swung the door open, and was surprised. The room was empty except for the person who summoned me – one of my favorite coworkers. The phone in the center of the table was on. I had no idea what was happening. I took a seat, and the phone call commenced.

Let me tell you about our stategy for continued excellence.

The HR lady on the other end of the line wished me good day. My boss joined the call. As soon as he uttered the phrase “continued excellence,” I got the idea. It was like being kicked in the face. My coworker, bless her, left to find me a box of Kleenex. The rest of the call lasted two or three minutes. My boss finished. The HR lady let me know when I would have to clear out my office and when my last severance check would be mailed. By this time, I was lying on the conference table weeping. What would I do for money? How could I support my family? How could I ever get health insurance again in an economy like this? I was free falling.

And then the HR lady said that there was help for me. Thank god, because I sure felt like a wreck.

She proceeded to read off an 800 number. I could call it and speak to a trained counselor who would help me with my “difficult transition.” I stopped weeping and gave the phone a dirty look. Seriously?

I was allowed to leave for the rest of the day, so I did. I drove home in a fugue state. My ears made a sound like wind. I called my husband. He was like, Well, you hated that job! Chin up! Be happy! Now you can do what you really wanted to do and screw technical writing.

I agreed with him, but I still felt hurt in a fundamental way. It’s one thing to fantasize about leaving a job that you don’t feel fits you very well. It’s something else entirely to have the choice taken from you with an impersonal rejection.

That was in November. The first weeks were rough. I worked hard, diving into a big writing project and doing my best to keep up a routine as if I were still employed. Every few days, I’d be gripped with fear that my family would starve, get sick while uninsured, or sink deep into debt. Then I would peruse job openings. Most of them filled me with dread.

I knew what I wanted to do. I have known it all along. I knew that anything else would make me very unhappy. I had never felt right in my old job, and that’s probably why I got canned. My heart wasn’t in it. I was always counting down the minutes to five o’ clock and praying for Fridays. Each time I worked on a new version of a manual, I experienced a deep sense of futility. I knew that I would be rewriting the same document in a few months, the next time a new feature was added. I knew that every day I spent doing something I didn’t care about was a day that I wasted.

Around the end of December, my fear started to subside. I opened up to the possibility that my husband and I would be able to support ourselves and our daughter with profits from our company. Jeremy had been running Outland while I was working at Motorola. He did a fine job, too, so we had plenty of work coming in.

Being laid off deals a grave amount of hurt and disruption to one’s life. So many people have had to endure this humiliation and deal with the resulting financial damage since this recession began. I don’t think it’s usually a blessing, but in my case, it was.

I work hard every day on jobs of my own and jobs that people hire me to do. If anything, I work much harder than I did when I knew that a fat paycheck would sail into my bank account every two weeks. For the first time, I am doing exactly what I want to be doing. I no longer entertain depressing thoughts about the futility of life or meting out days in coffee spoons. Doing a job that fits you right can bring an incredible amount of peace. I only wish I had figured this out sooner.

This used to be me.

Categories: Life, Outland, Writing

The Bartimaeus Trilogy

Posted on January 15th, 2012

I should have included this trilogy in my Good Reads 2011 post, but I was still finishing off Ptolemy’s Gate, the final book in the series.

The Bartimaeus Trilogy is an inventive alternate history that reimagines the UK as a bloating empire colonizing unlucky countries all over the world. Magicians control the government and most of the country’s wealth. They have created a police state wherein commoners suffer constant surveillance and harsh reprisals for any sort of rebellious activity.

The books present a unique take on magic. Magicians possess no magical power. Instead, they learn to harness spirits from another dimension (aka “The Other Place”) using pentagrams and detailed incantations. Magicians enslave the spirits, binding them to follow their commands and do their will. This creates tension between magicians and the source of their magic. There is an array of different spirits, from low-level imps used to spy or perform mechanical tasks to gigantic afrits who could level a city if insufficiently bound.

The best part of the trilogy is Bartimaeus, the djinn summoned by the protagonist. He is a pompous windbag who uses extensive footnotes to deliver hilarious commentary and anecdotes. Bartimaeus presents himself as a ruthless, powerful being, but reality slowly emerges. He is actually a third-rate spirit with a soft spot for human beings. He constantly refers to his involvement in major projects, such as building the pyramids and winning famous wars. Because he is thousands of years old, he offers a glib historical perspective about the rise and fall of empires.

The other characters are well done, too. There’s Nathan, the emerging young magician who summons Bartimaeus. They share a love/hate relationship and constantly harass each other, which is very entertaining. Nathan is not an incredibly likeable person, but he is certainly the most upstanding magician we meet. There’s also Kitty, a revolutionary commoner who becomes a very enjoyable character in the second and third books. She is by far the bravest character.

The trilogy stands out for its excellent follow through. The second and third books maintain the same high quality as the first. The more the story goes on, the higher the stakes are for a satisfying ending. Ptolemy’s Gate delivers.

I recently picked up The Ring of Solomon, which is a prelude to this series. It follows Bartimaeus when he serves King Solomon in 950 B.C. I expect that he will offer same style of entertaining, footnote-laden witticisms about this set of royalty as he did in the other books.

Categories: Reading

Ithaca Pages

Posted on January 3rd, 2012

Jeremy and I have been very busy lately working some projects for Outland Entertainment. The deadlines all hit at once, so we’ve had to put in a lot of hours this holiday season. We created a series of animated museum exhibits, a sex education booklet for Canadian youth, and a short sports comic. Such variety! The finished products are great, and I look forward to sharing them. In the meantime, I will post some recent Ithaca pages.

Ithaca will be released online in March or April of this year. We’re still getting a nice buffer of finished drawings from the artist (Dean Kotz). We’ll start coloring and lettering sometime next month. The following pages show the protagonist being trafficked and ultimately meeting her caretaker.

Categories: Comics, Outland, Writing