The Postmortal by Drew MagaryMy rating: 3 of 5 stars
I picked this up because it was nominated for the Philip K. Dick Award, and it jumped into my arms at the public library.
I like the premise of the story, and the overarching storytelling technique. The premise is that an American scientist discovered the cure for aging, and the main narrator in the story had the cure. Most of the book chapters are accounts from his e-mail or the news during the time, and a few break and go into plain narrative.
This isn't just an idea book though. The author takes the idea and really follows it through, decades later, to see what would truly happen to a world society that had the potential not to age. There are changes in religion, the family unit, war, and government control. Somehow it all feels like it goes on too long (I started consistently looking for how many pages I had left around 240), but I'm not sure what to cut. Maybe the love story. Maybe the final career. Maybe the bizarre ending. Maybe some of the side tidbits that are thrown in just to show one detail of the issues with never aging (interesting, but not as critical to the central story). It isn't bad, but all these side trips keep the book from being as riveting as I think it could have been.
You're right, that's a very interesting premise for a book. It's a shame the execution didn't quite work out for you. Actually, that's how I feel about a lot of sci-fi.....
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