How would you live if you knew how you would die?

The premise for this collection of short stories was introduced back in 2005, in an installment of Ryan North's popular Dinosaur Comics. In it, he presents the following premise: there is a machine which, with only a small sample of your blood, can tell you how you will die. But there are no dates, no details, no explanations. Just a few words, and that's it. The Machine is never wrong, but it is annoyingly vague and has a decidedly un-machinelike love of irony. So you might get OLD AGE and think you were set, right? Not necessarily. You could be murdered by an octogenarian while trying to steal their TV. Or you might get PLANE CRASH and decide never to fly again. Fine, but that won't stop the single-engine Cessna from plowing into your house one fine spring afternoon. Pulled GUILLOTINE, did you? Hope you know to stay away from heavy metal concerts.

But it doesn't matter. The Machine, while perversely misleading at times, is never wrong, and like most prophets, its predictions often only make sense after the event has already happened.

With that premise, hundreds of writers across the internet set to work. How would this Machine affect people? How would it affect society or business or politics? Would we become slaves to its predictions, or simply shrug it off and live our lives as we did before, knowing that we were going to die someday anyway?

In "Flaming Marshmallow" by Camille Alexa, we see how the existence of the Machine has begun to shape youth culture. Carolyn is about to turn sixteen, the legal age at which one can be tested. A milestone equivalent with getting one's driver's license or being able to vote, kids monitor each other's fates with scrupulous detail. Your eventual manner of death brings you together with those of similar fates, and new cliques begin to form. Kids who are going to die violent deaths sit together in the lunch room, far away from the ones who get OLD AGE. The kids with DRUG OVERDOSE and fates like it all mill about with each other, and nobody talks to the ones who get SUICIDE. By finding out one's manner of death, a teenager gets what teenagers always want: a sense of belonging and inclusion. But will Carolyn's fate bring her closer to her fellow students or just leave her an outsider?

"After Many Years, Stops Breathing, While Asleep, With Smile On Face," by William Grallo, continues that idea out into the adult world. Ricky is dragged out on the town to a nightclub where people flaunt their deaths. They wear fake toe tags with MURDER or HEART ATTACK on them. Or, if they're feeling impish, NEVER, or BOREDOM. But while everyone else is mocking their deaths, Ricky is in the odd position of knowing that he's got a good end to his life. What he doesn't know is what will happen between now and then, or with whom he will share it.

David Malki ! explores the darker side of society's reactions in "Cancer." James is a young man whose father is dying of cancer. It's what the Machine had predicted, and it was all coming true. Despite the Machine's infallibility, however, his father was seeking out a cure, a way out from the fate that had been given to him. And he's not the only one - a new generation of hucksters and faith healers has sprung up, all claiming to be able to defy the predictions of The Machine. It gives James' father hope, but whether that hope is worth the price or not is something James is unsure of.

"Nothing," by Pelotard, is a touching tale of a young woman who discovers a family secret that never would have been revealed before the Machine was invented. "Despair," by K.M. Lawrence, is an examination of how paralyzed people might become by the ambiguity of the predictions, unable to act lest they inadvertently fulfill them. "Improperly Prepared Blowfish" by Gord Sellar is an entertaining moment of secrets and betrayal among a group of yakuza in Japan, and Ben "Yahtzee" Croshaw has some fun with the politics of Machine predictions by giving us a politician whose fate is to die from EXHAUSTION FROM HAVING SEX WITH A MINOR.

Some stories are funny, others are touching, but they all center around that most existential of questions: how do we live, knowing that we will die?

Without The Machine, we still know we're going to die. Every one of us has, somewhere in the back of our mind, that constant reminder that our lives are finite, that there is a limit to the amount of time we can spend on this earth. And, for the most part, we choose to ignore it. After all, if you spend your whole life obsessing over your own death, then you can't have much of a life, now can you? But add to that fundamental knowledge of finitude the extra awareness of the manner of your death. If you get CAR CRASH, what can you do with that knowledge? You know it's inevitable, that The Machine is never wrong, but you may still struggle with that fate. You may cut up your driver's license, move out to Amish country and vow never to be within striking distance of a car again. The entire course of your life will shift drastically, based on the two words printed on that card, but the end result will be the same: CAR CRASH. Knowing that, is it better to act on the knowledge you have gained, or to ignore it?

Even worse, sometimes the very act of finding out your fate leads you right to it. In "Suicide" by David Michael Wharton, characters learn about their deaths only moments before experiencing it. Had they not gone to get tested on The Machine - had they not gone to that machine - would they have avoided their fate? The Machine would say no, but you'd have to ask it first. The best expression of this paradox is contained in the book's shortest tale, "HIV Infection From Machine of Death Needle" by Brian Quinlan, wherein the very act of discovering your fate causes that fate to happen, whereas you would never have had it if you hadn't gone looking for it. It's kind of a mind trip, if you think about it.

What if you get something fairly straightforward, like CANCER, and you decide to, say, jump out of an airplane without a parachute? Will that even be possible, or will random events conspire to keep you safe until your proscribed end? And if you get SUICIDE, the one form of death you have absolute control over, do you fight against it or give in, knowing that nothing you do will change the outcome?

And what could this tell you about the future for everyone? In "Heat Death of the Universe," by Ramon Perez, teenagers who reach the legal testing age start getting NUCLEAR BOMB as their means of death. The government springs into action, testing, re-testing, and vowing to corral all these kids into one place. But if their deaths are inevitably by NUCLEAR BOMB, what does that mean? It means that whether they're all in one place or dispersed across the country, that is how they will die. Acting on the information doesn't change its outcome, only what the manner of that outcome will be.

Conversely, it might be impossible to predict anything from the predictions The Machine gives out. As was pointed out in the same story, the 3,000 victims of 9/11 probably wouldn't have all had TERRORISM printed on their little cards. They might have had FALLING or FIRE or PLANE CRASH - all true, but none of that would have helped anyone prevent that event. Even something as clear and unambiguous as GLOBAL THERMONUCLEAR WAR creates problems, as Cassandra finds out in the story of the same name by T. J. Radcliffe. If you tell people about this future, will they even believe you? Or will the actions they take to prevent it instead be what causes it to happen? There are no easy answers, at least not without electroshock.

It's a fascinating group of stories, illustrated by some of the internet's best artists - Adam Koford, Kevin McShane, Aaron Diaz, Kate Beaton, Christopher Hastings, and too many others to mention. It will do what all really good writing should do - make you think. As seductive as it sounds, knowing the means of your death is information that you really can do without. It is the end to your story, whether you know it or not, but everything until then is still up to you. While you may not have any choice over how you die, you still have plenty of control over how you live. You can live in fear or hope, make plans and take risks and hope for the best.

Just like we do now.

I'll leave you with a joke from Steven Wright, one that was running through my head as I read the book: My girlfriend asked me if I could know how and when I was going to die, would I want to know? I said, "No, not really." She said, "Okay, forget it, then."

Thank you, he'll be here all week.

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"What good is knowing the future if you can't do anything with the knowledge?"

Dad, from "Friendly Fire" by Douglas J. Lane

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The theme which is the backbone of this short story collection is a pretty fun idea. There is a machine that can tell the manner of an individual's death from a blood sample. The catch is, there is no date of death given...and the results can be extremely vague and unpredictable.

As an example:

Someone could get a result of 'Barracuda'...so they avoid bodies of water their whole life, only to be hit and killed by a Dodge Barracuda while walking down the street. (I made this example up...hence...no spoiler warning)

With the exception of a few of them, these stories are very well written and do a good job of exploring all different angles of this hypothetical situation.

I was pleasantly surprised that these authors didn't take a path akin to the Final Destination movies. In other words most of these stories focus not on the actual death taking place...but on how the characters live their lives knowing how they will die. This makes the book far more entertaining and valuable to read. It could have easily become trashy throw-away entertainment, but it avoids falling into that trap and at times even becomes a nice commentary on the human condition.

This is a fun read that will at times catch you off guard with sadness and humor. I highly recommend this collection.

4.25/5

I'm happy to say that not only was I one of the people who helped achieve the goal of elevating this book to Amazon's #1 slot on its debut, but that by doing so, we made Glenn Beck sad. I could have never opened the book and been happy with that purchase. And if Beck had read even a little of the book, or the website that spawned it, he'd know that it is not, as he said, a book celebrating a "culture of death," but a celebration of life. Most stories don't even include the death foretold within them, which is admittedly disappointing with predictions like "ALMOND," "NOT WAVING BUT DROWNING," and "FLAMING MARSHMALLOW." Most of the stories are about people who realize too late how they didn't want their predictions, or how becoming more acquainted with their own demise leads them to try to lead better lives. Granted, there are also many stories about individuals or even entire societies spiraling off in wildly unhealthy directions with the advent and spread of the Machine. Stories where "getting your ticket" is not only optional, but required at a certain age--even at birth, or as a pre-natal health scan. There's some pretty messed-up possibilities from the possibility of knowing how everyone will die.

The Machine is always right, though--there's no use trying to trick it or make it wrong. Some people will try to find another way out, but suicide attempts fail, or merely render you comatose until your real fate can get you. One story details how scientists work out a way to possibly send themselves a message from the future using the Machine and its inevitably correct predictions, while another tells of a young woman using Schroedinger-like reasoning to try to prevent a nuclear war by removing knowledge of it. Some are darkly humorous, a couple are deeply unsettling, but most are about hope above all else. All of the stories (even the one which is shorter than its own title) are very, very good.

I have only one problem: I don't like the idea that we can't control our fates. A couple authors get around that by pointing out that even though the Machine writes the end of our stories, it doesn't write the middle. And that's still a problem I only have with the Machine itself; not the book. The book is fantastic.

full review at: [...]

For a bunch of ragtag webcomic and/or other crazy Internet phenomena authors (HAH!), Ryan North, David Malki! and Matthew Bennardo know how to dig up some crazy good stories. Of course, that should actually be expected from people who create impressively humorous comics on a regular basis--the Internet, after all, probably has some of the harshest critics in the world, and so its creators--because Messrs. North, Malki, and Bennardo do indeed create--constantly step up their game.

Machine of Death is one such creation, and one that has actually burst from the seams of the Internet and leaped into the real world. At first glance, it looks like a bunch of science fiction stories--something few people would claim to legitimately enjoy. And yet these are science fiction stories for the layman--stories that tell of high school romance, of marital troubles, of, as one reviewer put it, existential dread. They're stories that deal splendidly with the idea of the Machine of Death--a tool that tells people just how they're going to die, if vaguely--and oftentimes go far beyond the known realms of what such a machine might entail. Whether it's with a dramatic or humorous look at the Machine of Death--and this book has got both, sometimes in the same story--Machine of Death's stories, however varied, manage to do what science fiction (or just fiction in general) so rarely can, which is immerse readers wholly into their worlds. Obviously, the plot twists inherent in the idea of Machine of Death mean that I'm unable to tell of any shining moments from the stories, especially considering the massive spoilers that even a few sentences would entail--but considering that the first forty pages are available online here ([...]), you can find out for yourself.

Above all, Machine of Death subverts its cheesy scifi title, and in fact does brilliantly what scifi is meant to do in the first place--reveal through a brand new world (so to speak) our inner troubles, societal woes, and other things we find totally uneasy to talk about in our own boring ol' planet. It's a return to form, and yet it takes place in a world whose values and concepts mirror our own. Just by adding one new element in an otherwise normal world, Machine of Death changes everything about it. It makes you think and makes you think well--and especially in this day and age, that's a great thing.

When I received the book, I opened it up, and a small slip of paper, about the size of a business card, fell out. BEER, it said. "Haha." I said, "That's rad. They included a joke death prediction with the book! Brilliant." And I went about my business. I kept reading my book and drinking beer. "If I die from beer, I die from beer." I thought to myself. And for a good week and a half everything was great. The stories were brilliant and well varied, with whimsical ones like Flaming Marshmallow, to much sadder, like Exploded. But regardless of the tone of the story, all were equally gripping. And the more that I read, the more those four letters weighed on my mind. BEER.

I tried to ignore it, but then, one night, I had just purchased a growler of beer and was walking back to my bicycle with the beer in my back when I felt something coursing down the small of my back and my pants. "Oh No" I thought. "What happened?!" I took off my bag and opened it. The growler had exploded, soaking everything in my bag with beer. And there, at the bottom of my bag, dripping with brown ale, was the book. Only after it was too late, I realized that BEER was not for me, but for my book.

It only made sense. A book filled with tales of ambiguous death predictions should die as the result of the ambiguity surrounding it's own fate... And with that tale of caution, I STRONGLY encourage you to purchase this book.

***for the record, I didn't ACTUALLY get a slip of paper in my book, so you shouldn't expect one, but I DID have a growler of beer explode all over my book.***

There were some really great stories in this collection, and it can be quite enjoyable to go through and see the different ways the authors present the theme. My favorite stories I read so far are probably, "Torn Apart and Devoured by Lions" (I like to think this is how I would respond to this type of situation), "Almond" (which has a great meta structure and some really clever bits), "Vegetables" (which develops in a way I really wasn't expecting).

And... that's roughly where I stopped. My Kindle says I'm at page 185/439. For some reason, I completely lost interest at that point. True, there were some stories in there that I didn't particularly care for, But, I don't really think that's why I stopped reading. The central problem is, so many stories start to sound exactly the same. For example, too many of the stories start with the author explaining the MOD. It's so boring to keep reading this explanation when the last 10 stories had the same explanation. It's a little unfortunate, since it's not really the author's fault. The stories were mostly written to stand alone, so it makes sense that they would explain the concept. Furthermore, even though a certain idea or setting or something is really clever standing by itself, it isn't quite as interesting the 2nd and 3rd time another author uses the same idea (not to imply plagiarism or anything, just that in a constrained topic like this, it's inevitable to have this kind of overlap).

Are the stories good? For the most part, yes. Should you buy the book? If your a fan of the main guys' other work (ex., Dinosaur Comics, The Time Traveler's Pocket Guide, Wondermark) and want to support them, or there's a particular story that you're interested in reading, or if you really dig the concept, then I say yes. But, don't plan to just read straight through it - read a story now and then, mull over it a bit, read something else, forget about it - and only then pick it up again and read another story.

To get it out the way I think the "dropped in a muddy puddle" look for the front cover was a bad idea, especially for a product bought new online. I thought I had just purchased a nasty copy but the product image has identical coffee/blood stains: definitely the most convincing false-grime I've seen.

As a collection of short stories quality fluctuation is to be expected but many stories genuinely deliver. As a premise for a story the instinctive reaction would be some sob story/ paranoid escape from fate story, so the best (i.e most of those in the book) are those that deviate off at another interesting angle.

'While trying to save another', 'Cocaine and Painkillers' and 'After many years, stops breathing...'(not least because it is illustrated by Scott C. of Psychonauts et al)are personal favorites. These seem to best capture the subtle human emotion such a device would provoke.

The ones that fall flat tend to be those that mention the history/principle of the machine, often at length, which isn't necessary when the reader KNOWS all the background they need from the title itself. And of course T-Rex's ever enthusiastic braingasm that got the ball rolling in the first place. There is also a frequent temptation to put some sort of completely anticipated twist from the story's title, for example in 'Nothing'. It does work brilliantly in 'Exhaustion from having sex with a minor' however.

I sincerely hope nobody has ever written that sentence.

Speaking as a dedicated Internet Rambler what appealed most is 'Machine Of Death' as a collection of writers from my frequent haunts: Jess Fink, Yahtzee, Kris Straub, Kate Beaton, John Allison, Ramon Perez...

Their fantastic work I will support and ingest at any opportunity.

Of course, thanks to this book, I can add names to my electric procrastination list (Daliso Chaponda sir. My Hat. Doffed).

And what better result can you get from a short story collection?

I remember wishing when I read the original Dinosaur Comics comic that started it all that the book would be made. As a fan of science fiction short stories, I couldn't have been more impressed. The many author's various idea on such a world and society's changes are astoundingly brilliant, witty, and imaginative. I have yet to read a more brilliant collection of stories, thanks in large part to the amazing concept they are all based on. The ideas of possible uses for such a machine are incredible. Ryan North's own story, Murder and Suicide, Respectively, is a work of genius, Flaming Marshmallow is a perfect introduction to the stories coming after it, Torn Apart and Devoured by Lions is hilarious (Organ meats!), HIV Infection From Machine of Death Needle epitomizes the phrase "Brevity is the soul of wit", and Almond is one of the most ingeniously written works of fiction I have ever read. I'm a two thirds of the way through the book, I haven't even gotten to Randall Munroe's contribution, but I can already tell this is going to be my favorite book for years to come. I read the first few stories aloud to my twin sister, numerous friends have asked to borrow it when I'm done, and I've recommended it to pretty much everyone I've talked to since picking it up.

Lots of issues with delivery, but when it finally came was thrilled. Picked this up at the library and knew I wanted to have it. Short stories..some graphic, but all ironic. People get a paper with manner of death but nothing else....I recommend the short...potato... Happy reading

The simple but fascinating premise of all these stories is that a machine exists which can sample your blood and then predict how you are going to die: not in great detail, but just in an all-caps short sentence or even single word such as CANCER or DROWNING or SHOT BY SNIPER or VEGETABLES or IMPROPERLY PREPARED BLOWFISH or even TORN APART AND DEVOURED BY LIONS. All of those are story titles from this collection which ranges in tone from deeply satirical to the sweet and touching, via some full-blown dystopias and works of brilliantly funny black comedy.

How would life be different if you knew how you were going to die (or thought you did)? These stories look at every aspect of society: teenage cliques based on how cool your predicted death is; unemployed astrologers who no longer have a trade to peddle; dinner party games matching the prediction to the guest; fearless pilots who fly dangerously knowing that a crash is not how they are fated to go. The style of writing varies tremendously and some stories feel more professional than others but there's a fascinating range of responses here and overall this is a thought-provoking and entertaining collection. Highly recommended.

I had so much fun reading this book. After a somewhat more dense read I felt I needed something to unwind and this book was exactly what I needed. Although it deals with the theme of death, this is not at all a grim or depressive anthology, quite the opposite. It is very refreshing to see the law of large numbers in action in such a creative way. As what the internet takes on mortality, existence and moral questions are, curate the submissions well enough and voila: Great premise, amazing results.

Anthologien werden nur noch selten veröffentlicht, Romane bestimmen den übersättigten Buchmarkt. Das bedeutet allerdings nicht, dass diese auch unbedingt qualitativ besser sind. Der Heyne Verlag hat den Mut und sich an eine Storysammlung herangewagt, welche auch recht gelungen ist. Vielleicht liegt es auch daran das die Autoren völlig unbekannt und unverbraucht sind. Ihre Geschichten spielen nicht in einer futuristischen Zukunft, sondern in einer Welt wie sie uns bekannt ist.

Das Thema der Anthologie: eine Maschine die voraussagt wie man sterben wird. Das Spektrum der Geschichten ist recht breit gefächert, viele regen zum nachdenken an, einige sind pessimistisch-traurig, andere humorvoll-ironisch. Die erzählerische Vielfalt macht dieses Buch interessant und lesenswert, zumindest für alle die was mit Science-Fiction Erzählungen anfangen können. Zu jeder der 34 Geschichte gibt es eine zum Thema passende Illustration und rundet dieses Buch auch optisch ansprechend ab.

Gäbe es eine Maschine welche die Todesursache vorhersagen könnte, die Welt wie wir sie kennen würde sich grundlegend verändern. Vielleicht so sehr das ein Zusammenbruch der Gesellschaft unvermeidlich wäre. Andererseits vielleicht alles nur halb so wild, der Mensch kann sich an vieles gewöhnen und passt sich gegebenenfalls auch an.

Jeder kann sich mal selbst die Frage stellen, ob er die eigene Todesursache wirklich wissen möchte, ohne das Wann und das Wo zu erfahren. Wie würde man sich mit diesem Wissen verhalten, so weiter machen wie bisher, oder sein Leben ändern. Eins ist jedoch absolut sicher, entgehen kann man der Vorhersage nicht.

Das Verfahren um an das Wissen zu gelangen ist denkbar einfach, es wird ein Finger in die Maschine gesteckt, etwas Blut wird entnommen, kurz analysiert und schon spuckt die Maschine eine Karte aus, auf dem die Todesursache steht. Da können dann so kryptische Vorhersagen herauskommen wie, -Nicht Winkend Sondern Ertrinkend, oder -Wärmetod Des Universums. Doch auch recht klar formulierte Ursachen wie -Hungertod, -Beim Versuch Jemanden Zu Retten, -Atomkrieg, sind nicht immer so eindeutig wie sie erscheinen.

In den Geschichten gibt es einige Protagonisten, die versuchen dem eigenen Tod entgegen zu wirken. Steht auf den Zettel als Ursache Ertrinken kann man den Rest seines Lebens versuchen Wasser zu meiden. Doch letzten Endes behält die Maschine immer recht und Wasser muss nicht unbedingt der Grund fürs Ertrinken sein. Es gibt nur wenige Menschen die unwissend weiterleben wollen, manche werden zu Maschinenstürmern und zerstören die ihrer Meinung nach Ursache allen Übels. Doch bei den meisten überwiegt die Neugier mit allen daraus resultierenden Konsequenzen. Diese Anthologie vereint viele Storys die gelungen sind, sehr gut gefallen hat mir z.B. die Geschichte -Nichts wo der Protagonist einen leeren Zettel bekommt. Egal wie oft er sich testen lässt die Karte bleibt leer, bedeutet dass nun das er unsterblich ist, oder kann die sonst unfehlbare Maschine seinen Tod nicht voraussehen.

Bis auf wenige Ausnahmen sind die Erzählungen durchaus gelungen und auch die Schwächeren sind keine Totalausfälle.

Solide Unterhaltung die zum Nachdenken anregt, 4 Sterne

A good collection of stories. As always in a collection, some were better than others but the concept was interesting and the book is worth reading. Recommended.