Customer Reviews

Machine of Death: A Collection of Stories About People Who Know How They Will Die

5 star:		(76)
4 star:		(20)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

My copy of Machine of Death arrived yesterday, and I couldn't put it down until the last story was read and the last illustration admired. Fortunately, this collection lives up to the promise of its premise (say that ten times fast), offering up 34 unique meditations on a modern, mechanical Oracle of Delphi. Some of them are very funny--"Cocaine and Painkillers" and "Prison Knife Fight" are standout examples, but by no means the only ones. Others are thought-provoking, or poignant, or simply odd. I can't say that every story spoke to me personally, but I can say that the anthology overall was immensely entertaining and well worth reading.

It's kind of amusing that a prominent, wealthy media "personality"--apparently peeved that a tiny bit of attention was diverted from his own book--derided this book as exemplifying a "Culture of Death." If said "personality" had bothered to actually read the book before commenting (something I learned to do in, oh, elementary school), he would have realized that these stories about life, not death. They examine the human condition: love, friendship, hope, doubt, the struggle to make the best of things the face of adversity. This is NOT a book about people who "go gentle into that good night," in the words of Dylan Thomas. It may be in small part about talking dinosaurs, however.

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.

So, this is a fantastic book. I read some of the stories and they are all top-notch quality. Delightful.

However, one thing bothers me. As soon as I ordered the book, a note was passed through my door by an apparently invisible force. The note simply said, EXISTENTIAL DREAD. Now, I wasn't fazed at first. Except then I was, because I started to read more stories and the machine was right in each case.

I tried to rationalize it away but it gnawed and gnawed at me. I couldn't do anything about it. The machine was like God.

I hope you enjoy this product. 5 stars for accuracy. Goodbye.

Obviously a mixed bag, being an anthology, but don't open straight to the stories by your favorite Internet-famous people. The stories by Randall Munroe (navel-gazing and not very well-written) and Ryan North (Clever, but so enamored of its own cleverness it became a trite expansion of the idea rather than an enjoyable story) are not nearly as good as those by many of the less well-known authors. Some of the ideas were a bit obvious, but the stories well-written, and other ideas were comically brilliant (I loved "Torn Apart by Lions"). Worth the cover price.

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.

-------------------------------------------------------

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

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

-------------------------------------------------------

A suitable warning needs to be added to these reviews. Do not buy this book unless you are prepared to spend your free time thinking about it. Between and after the stories, your mind will constantly return to the thought of what you would do with the knowledge of your own death and the implications for free will.

Are we all going to die? Sure. Do we live in a deterministic universe? Maybe. Did Machine of Death tick Glenn Beck off? Yep. Is the idea of a Machine of Death going to keep you awake at night? Almost certainly. Be warned.

Machine of Death: A Collection of Stories About People Who Know How They Will Die is one of those just-what-it-says-on-the-cover books. But it's also a collection of stories about people who live in a world where some people are just recently finding out how they'll die, or where everyone knows how they'll die, or where it's illegal to not know how you'll die. Reactions vary wildly, from morbid fascination (Torn Apart And Devoured By Lions) to fear and anger (Firing Squad) to shame (Exhaustion After Having Sex With A Minor) to disbelief (Love). And through each story, the Death Machine dances at the edge of your mind, taunting you with vagueness and shocking you with specificity, mocking the tragedy of death with a grim irony that is at once appalling and undeniable. Each author's unique take on the story is presented with a new artist's representation, tying the whole book together. So go ahead, find out if you sit with the Crashers at lunch, or if you're doomed from homicide or starvation. And when you're finished, pass it on.

First, I have to say that it wasn't what I expected, but it was better than what I expected. For whatever reason I expected more stories dealing with the actual death of people. Instead it was more about the reactions of people to the concept itself or their particular reading.

My two favorites in the book are very very different, yet at the core have the same sort of bias towards the machine. Torn Apart and Devoured by Lions and Miscarriage are those two. Neither of them actually contain the death and one is both completely accurate for the story it titles, yet isn't the way someone dies or is slated to die.

The stories are so varied and there are even several from the point of view of the "creators" of the machine. None of the stories in this collection take away anything from any of the others and they all seem to fit very well together. I went in only being familiar with the work of two of the editors and one of the writers in the collection as they all write webcomics that I love and read whenever there is a new one available. Those three webcomics (Dinosaur Comics, Wondermark, and xkcd) showcase the variety of perceptions, views, and entertainment type you can find on the internet and that really translates into the entire book.

I'm very impressed overall with not only the variety of stories, but the collection as a whole is very well put together.

This book starts off amazing, and then about half way some of the stories start to get a little slow. Definitely recommend this book as some of the stories are just perfect: entertaining and insightful.

"Machine of Death: A collection of stories about people who know how they will die" is the product of a collaboration of many of the most creative, hardworking people on the internet today.

You raise your eyebrows at this review and think, "On the internet?"

When you do this, when you feel incredulous, know that I, the reviewer, said these words at some point in the past in reference to your future question, "Yes. On the internet. And here's why that should entice you."

I said those words out loud just now, but I was referring to a link that I am about to post to an article I would really like you to read. It was written by one of the authors of this incredibly special book, and properly exemplifies why you should buy "Machine of Death", on this coming October 26.

(The link is no longer valid, sorry!)

Don't you want to be a part of something really cool? This bandwagon is for the coolest folks around.