The Death Machine
Review, read it and then the book or go to http://machineofdeath.net/ and read for free…
Death Machine
Some would say a book about a machine that could tell you how you were going to die would be slightly morbid—even to an excessive level. When I saw Machine of Death sitting on a bookshelf me thoughts were no different—but as it turn out I am rather fond of existentialism. So, picking that paperback book I looked at the front page and I realised just how strange and wondrous this book actually was. It took a while to read the premise and the introduction but without that crucial step the collected stories that makes up this book makes little to no sense. When I started reading the book I could not help but realise how brilliant this book really is; and I loved it.
The book Machine of Death edited by Ryan North, Matthew Bennard and David Malki; is a book up of short stories by various authors. All based around one single premise—what if a machine could tell, just from a sample of your blood, just how you were going to die? “It didn’t give you the date and it didn’t give you specifics. It just spat out a sliver of paper upon which were printed, in careful block letters, the words ‘DROWNED’ or ‘CANCER’ or ‘OLD AGE’ or ‘CHOKED ON A HANDFUL OF POPCORN.’ …[T]he machine was frustratingly vague in its predictions: dark, and seemingly delighting in the ambiguities of language. ‘OLD AGE,’ it had already turned out, could mean either dying of natural causes, or being shot by a bedridden man in a botched home invasion” — from the introduction. It started a comic and a bright green T-Rex who suggested just how fantastic a story written from that premise would be. Then a group of wonderful Internet people organized a book out stories people sent in, this is the result.
The stories themselves are interesting, and fun to read despite being from many authors—I expected that at least a few of them should bland or boring. Though strangely I liked every single one of them my favorite is only one sentence long! The story HIV INFECTION FROM MACHINE OF DEATH NEEDLE by Brian Quinlan goes like this, “‘WELL,’ I thought, ‘that sucks.’” When I read this I laughed, now you might think I’m a terrible person but I’m not—really I’m not. I laughed at the extreme irony, and that what this book is for; a chance to laugh at the ultimate irony, a chance to laugh in the face of death and have death laugh right back.
It’s true that other feel the same way about this book, Hannah Strom-Martin from STRANGE HORIZONS says “…This sort of Man vs. Fate dilemma has obsessed us since Sophocles, so it’s not shocking to report that Machine of Death hooks you from page one. But where this collection could have been a one joke wonder or merely skated by on its own cleverness, it turns out that it’s a lot deeper than that. A lot more intelligent. A lot less predictable than its theme of inevitability would have you suppose…” When I finished this book I felt a slight feeling of disappointment, I don’t get that a lot, and it has always been my sign of a good book. I really truly loved this book—it might not have any literary merit—yet I would recommend it to anyone who asked what my favorite book was.
Sources:
-Strom-Martin, Hannah. “Strange Horizons Reviews: Machine of Death: A Collection of Stories About People Who Know How They Will Die, Edited by Ryan North, Matthew Bennardo, and David Malki !, Reviewed by Hannah Strom-Martin.” Strange Horizons, a Weekly Speculative Fiction Magazine. 16 Mar. 2011. Web. 05 June 2011. .
-North, Ryan, Matthew Bennardo, and David Malki. Machine of Death. Web. 05 June 2011..
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