The Future and Why We Should Avoid It: Killer Robots, The Apocalypse and Other Topics of Mild Concern

"Death is probably inevitable, assuming I fail in my attempts to transfer my consciousness into this Roomba. Note to my descendants: When I spin in three tight circles, that means I want a grilled cheese sand- wich." -- Scott Feschuk

The future holds many unknowns: advances in medical technology, increased airport security and critical new inventions like sentient, polygraph-enabled, wireless toasters. Luckily, Maclean's columnist Scott Feschuk has written a survival guide -- part how-to manual, part product guide, part apocalypse analysis and part sardonic observation -- to help us navigate these troubled times. Or at least make us laugh while we try.

The Future and Why We Should Avoid It envisions the daunting, depressing era we have to look forward to with the best of Feschuk's musings on aging, death, technology, inventions, health and leisure. "The Mid-Life Crisis" offers suggestions on choosing your own personal physical manifestation of crippling self-doubt and fleeting mortality. He notes that many of them have been done before, but as you get older and your memory deteriorates, you won't remember that you’re being cliched. He hypothesizes on what Apple might come up with next: the iCap? iSnuggie? Or maybe iCouch, a response to Google Heinie, the only other platform that allows you to update Facebook with your ass? And finally, in "What's Killing Us Now?," Feschuk imagines how the world might end. Suitably dramatic possibilities include rogue strangelets from the Hadron Collider, The Rapture, collision with a giant asteroid and solar flares (alternately described by scientists as "solar climaxes" and "coronal mass ejections," making this the dirtiest-sounding doom).

Combining quizzes, voiceovers and speeches, and employing snark, innuendo, toilet humour and shameless mockery -- because how else do you cope with the fact that one day you will die? -- Feschuk contemplates the fate of humanity and the planet in the upcoming years, poking fun, provoking thought and dredging up silver linings in even the darkest forecasts.