A review by thisisstephenbetts
Machine of Death: A Collection of Stories about People Who Know How They Will Die by Matthew Bennardo, Ryan North, David Malki

3.0

Anthology of short stories on the same theme - what would the world be like if our cause of death (but not time) can be foretold by a machine? The predictions are always accurate, but often opaque. There's a wide range of contributors here, and so the stories are a little uneven. Mostly there's some kind of introspective, philosophical bent to them; of course touching on mortality, but also free will, predestination, fate, technology, fear of technology - lots of stuff. It's good fun and occasionally thought provoking. The stories here were chosen as the best submitted (rather than asking for selections and printing them all) and the producers of the book have various affordable ways of reading it (I got it cheap at the SPX comics festival - you can read it for free on their website: http://machineofdeath.net/about/book).

I enjoyed the book, and (perhaps more) am excited and interested to see how they are experimenting with new collaborative publishing models. Check out their website: