Matthew BennardoReseñas

The Machine of Death tells you how you die, but it isn't always as straight forward as the results from the machine might make it seem. This makes all of the stories a bit more fun, as while you are reading them, you try and figure out exactly what the Old Age-prediction meant - are you going to die from old age, or is an old person going to run you over while crossing the street.

Except for one story - where the prediction is exactly how the creature is going to end up... guess you'll just have to read the book to find out which one!

I can't even tell you how great these stories were. Seriously, a choose your own adventure Machine of Death Story? A brochure for how to talk to your 6 year old about their CODT (cause of death testing) experience from the Department of Homeland Security - genius.

There were also stories that were so sad and painful but still amazing and beautiful.

You know, the older I get, the more I love the short story format and these were all very good short examples of the genre.

This is the second anthology of stories (and some cartoons) featuring the Machine of Death. (The first, imaginatively enough, was called Machine of Death.) What is the Machine of Death? It's a mysterious device that, when provided with a blood sample, will tell you how you die. It's short on details, and its answers are sometimes ambiguous, cryptic, or downright misleading, but they're never, ever wrong. No matter what you do.

A lot of the stories in this one expand the original idea in new directions. Some put versions of the death machine into different historical periods, the far future, or alternate fantasy worlds. Others toy a bit with the question of how the machine works in the first place. There are several that deal with the idea of fake machines and quite a few that take the idea that a person's death prediction never changes and enjoy trying to find a loophole in it, while others continue to explore the questions of how individuals and societies respond to such a thing.

And my feeling about this volume is much the same as with the first one. Individually, most of these stories aren't necessarily incredibly well-written or interesting (although there some very good exceptions). But a whole kaleidoscope of different explorations and interpretations of this idea is truly compelling, more than enough so to keep me engaged through two fairly thick books.

What is life like when you know how you will die?


I enjoyed the first Machine of Death book, and I liked this one even more. These authors found a wide variety of ways to play with the basic concept, and set the stories stories in almost-as-diverse locations. Some of the stories are based on non-human characters, adding another layer of creativity to the endeavor.

(Disclosure: I won a copy of this in a Goodreads giveaway, after I'd already purchased the ebook.)

I thoroughly enjoyed the first MoD anthology ([b:Machine of Death: A Collection of Stories About People Who Know How They Will Die|9548075|Machine of Death A Collection of Stories About People Who Know How They Will Die|Ryan North|http://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/books/1328762737s/9548075.jpg|14434509]) and am eagerly awaiting the card game, so I dove right into this second volume. I was pleasantly surprised to see that these stories pushed the concept even further; they really took the concept and ran with it. Just as in the first book, an illustration accompanies each tale, but now there are occasional one-page comic strips as well.

I do have to note one area where the ebook disappointed me, though: the choose-your-path story ("Your Choice") should have had hyperlinks connecting the choices to their proper sections. This capability is one of the strong points of electronic books, and the publisher really should have made the most of that.

Overall, though, that's a minor flaw in an excellent collection of stories.

Once again, the Machine of Death crew has put together a fabulous anthology of stories about people knowing how (but not when... or even super specifically) they will die. And while the foundation is death, the stories are not necessarily disturbing or depressing. There are action/adventure tales, romance stories, mysteries, funny bits, and engaging characters.

Lots of fun (but sometimes sad...)

The Machine of Death tells you how you’ll die, though it’s kind of evil/misleading in its descriptions. From this one concept, many stories grew. In this, the second volume of stories, the authors push harder on the boundaries of the rules, tweaking and even breaking them (in the far future, the machine can tell when the probability of your death is 0 and when it’s 1; a version of the machine existed before the French Revolution; the machine was an indicator of alien invasion; the machine generates an industry of death explainers staffed at a call center in India; quarantines based on cause of death are a new variation on the worst that humans can do to each other; military assassins chosen for having “throat cancer” deaths and thus being unkillable in combat; etc.). I found them mostly quite enjoyable, and I was also proud of myself for identifying M.J. Leitch’s story before reading her name.½

A quirky time travel story. I didn't enjoy it, but then I don't have a hook in the past.

Good continuation of the "machine of death" concept. Several outstanding stories, and only a few disappointments.

Some of best:

Apitoxin
Cancer
Your Choice
In Battle, Alone, and Soon Forgotten
La Mort d'unRoturier

I really liked the setting of this near future ice age tale set on a drying Lake Erie, but there was too much attention to tech, sailing and weapons, for it to really grab me.