The End Specialist
The End Specialist by Drew Magary was recommended to me via Amazon because I had also read Genus by Jonathan Trigell. Like Genus, The End Specialist takes a supposed medical advancement for humanity and builds a nightmare dystopian vision from it.
In this novel, that advancement is a cessation of the aging process. Humans who receive 'the Cure', can still die, of cancer, disease, accidents, but they will not grow physically older nor die of old age. The novels protagonist John Farrell is an early recipient getting 'The Cure' whilst it is still underground and illegal through contacts. There is great societal uproar about the Cure, some deeming it sacrilegious and others near rioting with pressure upon the government to make it widely available for sale. Anti-cure movements are formed to bomb clinics which administer the drug, just as many organisations bomb today's abortion clinics.
In the struggle to grasp eternity, though the arguments against it are considered at the end of the day, every individual wants it, and moral arguments are cast aside, without many truly realising what the lack of natural death may bring.
The book follows John Farrell over the next 51 years until he is chronologically 80 but still looks just 29, and shows the enormous toll the cure has taken not only upon him, and upon his immediate society, but also upon the globe. Social problems being what they are, Farrell and others ultimately become 'End Specialists'
This book is compulsive, readable, fascinating, thought provoking, addictive, and a dozen other superlatives. A really well thought out and executed idea, which also feels like a precisely accurate depiction of what exactly would happen should a cure for the aging process be found.
I think this is an excellent novel on the part of Drew Magary, I massively recommend it and would give it 10/10
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