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. Combining quizzes, voiceovers and speeches, and employing snark, innuendo, toilet humor 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.